Percy Bysshe Shelley Similes. Frank J. Wilstach, comp. 1916. A Dictionary of Similes

Reference > Quotations > Frank J. Wilstach, comp. > A Dictionary of Similes

CONTENTS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.

Percy Bysshe Shelley


Blind agony, like a scorpion, stung by his own rage.	1
Pulseless arteries Are like the fibres of a cloud instinct With light.	2
Awful as silence.	3
Beams like flowers.	4
Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, The splendor of its prime.	5
Black as a cormorant.	6
Blind as love.	7
Blue as the overhanging heaven.	8
Break like a bursting heart.	9
Bright as all between cloudless skies and windless streams.	10
Bright as Spring.	11
Burst like morning on dream, or like heaven on death.	12
Bursts like one sound from ten thousand streams Of a tempestuous sea.	13
Calm as a cradled child in dreamless slumber bound.	14
Calm as a slumbering babe.	15
Calm as an angel in the dragon’s den.	16
Calm as death.	17
Calm, radiant, like the phantom of the dawn.	18
Ever changing, like a joyless eye That finds no objects worth its constancy.	19
Circles around it, like the clouds that swim Round the high moon in a bright sea of air.	20
Circles round, Like the soft waving wings of noonday dreams.	21
As clear as when a veil of light is drawn o’er evening hills.	22
Cold as dew to drooping leaves.	23
Cold, like a frozen chaos.	24
Comfortless, As silent lightning leaves the starless night.	25
Common as light is love, and its familiar voice wearies not ever.	26
Companionless as the last cloud of an expiring storm.	27
Countless … as leaves on autumn’s tempest shed.	28
Cries like the blood of Abel from the dust.	29
Curling like tendrils of the parasite Around a marble column.	30
Dance, Like wingèd stars.	31
Dance like white plumes upon a hearse.	32
Dart around, as light from the meridian sun.	33
Dear As human heart to human heart may be.	34
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops That visit my sad heart.	35
Decay Like corpses in a charnel.	36
Deep as night and Heaven.	37
Descending … Like the spring whose breath is blending All blasts of fragrance into one.	38
Sad dirges, Like the wind through a ruined cell, Or the mournful surges That ring the dead seaman’s knell.	39
Disappear, as if all had vanished through the sky.	40
Driven, like the alternations of an ever-changing wind over an Æolean lyre, which move it by their motion to ever-changing melody.	41
Eyes as fair As star-beams among the twilight trees.	42
His faint eyes, Like dew upon a sleeping flower.	43
Thine eyes are like the deep, blue boundless heaven.	44
Eyeless as old Destiny.	45
Fade … Like stars half quenched in mists of silver dew.	46
Fade like vapor.	47
Failed Like a brief dream of unremaining glory.	48
Failing like an unreplenished stream.	49
Fail like the trances of the summer air.	50
Fair as breathing marble.	51
Eyes as fair as star-beams among twilight trees.	52
Fair as the fabulous asphodels.	53
Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.	54
Fair, like stars when the moon is awakened.	55
Far as the remotest line That bounds imagination’s flight.	56
Burning far, like the light of an unmeasured star.	57
Feasting like fiends upon the infidel dead.	58
Feed on us, as worms devour our body.	59
Fell, like ocean’s feathery spray Dashed from the boiling surge Before the vessel’s prow.	60
Fell, like the unseen blight of a smiling day.	61
Fine as light.	62
Fired, as by a spell.	63
Firm as the world’s centre.	64
Fixed and indispensable as the majestic laws that rule yon rolling orbs.	65
Flashed like a strong inspiration.	66
Fled at will, as in a wingèd chariot.	67
Fled Like insect tribes before the northern gale.	68
Fled, Like the brief glory which dark Heaven inherits From the false dawn, which fades ere it is spread Upon the night’s devouring darkness.	69
Fled Like vultures frightened from Imus Before an earthquake’s tread.	70
Flee like a dream’s dim imagery.	71
Flee, like mist from the tempest’s might.	72
Flung as foam from a ship’s swiftness.	73
Flit, Like spendor-winged moths about a taper.	74
Flowed like light amid the shadows of the sea cast from one cloudless star.	75
Like a flock of rooks at a farmer’s gun Night’s dreams and terrors, every one, Fled from the brains which are their prey.	76
Foamed like a wounded thing.	77
Folded like thoughts in a dream.	78
Free in spirit as the mountain.	79
Full as a cup with the vine’s burning dew.	80
Gather, Like flocks of clouds in spring’s delightful weather.	81
Ghastly as a tyrant’s dream.	82
Gleam Like islands on a dark blue sea.	83
Glows like solid amethyst.	84
Glowing like the vital morn.	85
Grey, like a storm-extinguished day.	86
Green as the forest’s night.	87
Grew, Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished.	88
Grow like weeds on a neglected tomb.	89
Hung like bees on mountain-flowers.	90
Hang like night on heaven above me.	91
Hiss as of a rushing wind.	92
Horned like the crescent moon.	93
Howling, like a slaughtered town.	94
Indispensable As the majestic laws That rule yon rolling orbs.	95
Inwoven, Like sunlight through acacia woods at even.	96
Joyous as the morning ray.	97
Keen as the engine Which tortures and which kills.	98
Kings are like stars,—they rise and set, they have The worship of the world, but no repose.	99
Knotted like water-snakes.	100
Lay, like winds that die in water.	101
Leaner than fleshless misery.	102
Leaves … as silent lightning leaves the starless night.	103
Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity.	104
Lingering like an unloved guest.	105
Lone as incarnate death.	106
Loud as the clank of an ironmonger.	107
Loud as the voice of nature.	108
Love is like understanding, that grows bright Gazing on many truths; ’tis like thy light, Imagination.	109
Melt away, Like dissolving spray.	110
Melt, like cloud to cloud.	111
Melts away Like moonlight in the heaven of spreading day.	112
Mix them up Like self-destroying poisons in one cup.	113
Moveless, as a long-forgotten lyre Suspended in the solitary dome Of some mysterious and deserted fane.	114
Multitudinous as the desert sand Borne on the storm.	115
Murmured like a noontide bee.	116
Murmuring like the ocean roar.	117
Numerous as leaves that strew the autumnal gale.	118
My being overflowed, like a golden chalice to bright wine Which else had sunk into the thirsty dust.	119
Pale as yonder waning moon.	120
Pale—like the white shore Of Albion.	121
Passed, like a cloud on the blast.	122
Peeps like a star o’er ocean’s western edge.	123
Piercing, like the morn, now it has darted Its lustre on all hidden things.	124
Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate’er it touches.	125
Powerless as the wind That passeth idly by.	126
Pure as speechless infancy.	127
Pursued like raging hounds.	128
Quiver … Like weeds unfolding in the ocean.	129
Radiant as the air around a star.	130
Radiant, like the phantoms of the dawn.	131
Raged within me, like a scorpion’s nest Built in my entrails.	132
Rejoicing like a cloud of morn.	133
Rises as ocean at the enchantment of the moon.	134
Roar as of an ocean foaming.	135
Rosy as the morn.	136
Circles round, like the soft waving wings of noonday dreams.	137
Scattered like foam on the torrent.	138
Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aërial hue Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view.	139
Scattered, like a cloud of summer dust.	140
Sharp as a bayonet.	141
Shifted like restless clouds.	142
Shone like mountains in the morn.	143
Shine like obelisks of fire.	144
Shine like pyramids of fire.	145
Shone like the reflex of a thousand minds.	146
A deep silence, like the fearful calm That slumbers in the storm’s portentous pause.	147
Silent as a corpse.	148
Sinless as Eden.	149
Slumbering quietly, Like forms which sculptors carve.	150
Smiles, which spread like radiance from the cloud-surrounded moon.	151
Soft as an Incarnation of the Sun.	152
Soft as sleep.	153
Soft as the thoughts of budding love.	154
Softer than the West wind’s sigh.	155
Many a speck, Like the water-snake’s belly and the toad’s back.	156
Speckled like a toad.	157
Sped, like some swift cloud that wings the wide air’s wilderness.	158
Spread like a quenchless fire.	159
Spread Like radiance from the cloud-surrounded morn.	160
Springest like a cloud of fire.	161
Stand like flame transferred to marble.	162
Still as a brooding dove.	163
Strange as a dreamer’s mad imagings.	164
Stream like a comet’s flashing hair.	165
Strewn … like bridal chamber floors.	166
Swallowed Persia, as the sand does foam.	167
Sway, as the calm joy of flowers, and living leaves before the wind.	168
Swept Like waves before the tempest.	169
Sweet as a summer night without a breath.	170
Sweet as if angels sang.	171
Her looks were sweet as Heaven’s when loveliest in Autumn eves.	172
Swells like a sail before a favouring breeze.	173
Swift as a cloud between the sea and sky.	174
Swift as fire.	175
Swift as greyhounds.	176
Swift as leaves on autumn’s tempest shed.	177
Swift as smoke from a volcano springs.	178
Swift as twinkling beams.	179
Swifter than summer’s flight.	180
Swifter than youth’s delight.	181
Swim like beams through floating clouds.	182
Thin as Fraud.	183
Thunder as of earthquake coming.	184
Mutual hate tied, Like two dark serpents tangled in the dust.	185
Tottering … like lean herds pursued by gadflies.	186
Towering like rocks of jet Crowned with a diamond wreath.	187
Trembled Like ten thousand clouds which flow With one wide wind.	188
Twinkling like a dawn out of a speckled cloud.	189
Universal as the light.	190
Like a star of Heaven, In the broad daylight, Thou art unseen.	191
Uprise, like a tempestuous ocean.	192
Vacantly As ocean’s moon looks on the moon in heaven.	193
Vanish, like smoke before the tempest’s stream.	194
Voice … is soft like solitude’s.	195
Wan, Like the head and the skin of a dying man.	196
Wanderest Like the world’s rejected guest.	197
Small at first, and weak and frail Like the vapor of a vale.	198
White with the whiteness of what is dead, Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind past.	199
Worlds on worlds are rolling ever From creation to decay, Like the bubbles on a river, Sparkling, bursting, borne away.	200

CONTENTS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Click here to shop the Bartleby Bookstore.

Shakespeare · Bible · Saints · Anatomy · Harvard Classics · Lit. History · Quotations · Poetry