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| Absurd as giving bread-pills for a broken leg. | 1 |
| Black as the sliding water over a mill-dam. | 2 |
| Blowing like a grampus. | 3 |
Fortune changeth as the moon
To caravel and picaroon. | 4 |
| As chill and as green as the sea. | 5 |
| Clanging like a smithy-shop. | 6 |
| Clear as summer-lightning flare. | 7 |
| Clever as sin. | 8 |
| Cling like the sloth. | 9 |
| Curved like a stallion’s crop. | 10 |
| Curved over like the edge of a waterfall. | 11 |
| Dart like a rifle-bullet. | 12 |
| At a safe distance, like mother ducks watching their brood. | 13 |
Drooped like a lily tired
That lolls upon the stalk. | 14 |
The slow mists of the evening dropped,
Dropped as a cloth upon a dead man’s face. | 15 |
| He dropped like a bullock. | 16 |
| Men dropped like partridges. | 17 |
| Drunk as Davy’s sow on a frosty night. | 18 |
| As easy as a man dyin’ wi’ due warnin’. | 19 |
| Faint as the visions in a dream. | 20 |
| Fair as bar of gold. | 21 |
| In a fit of fidgets, when she behaved like a puppy chewing a string, a clumsy woman in a side-saddle, a hen with her head cut off, or a cow stung by a hornet. | 22 |
| Fizzled like freshly opened soda water. | 23 |
| Flash like a heliograph. | 24 |
| Fled like a dusky cloud. | 25 |
| Flickering light like the jewels of a broken necklace. | 26 |
| Glares like an excited cat. | 27 |
| Glared like hot iron. | 28 |
Heavy as remembered sin
That will not suffer sleep or thought to ease. | 29 |
| Howl like a wild beast. | 30 |
| Idle, and mean as a collier’s whelp. | 31 |
| Impartially as the grave. | 32 |
| Impassive as the copper head on a penny. | 33 |
| Jingled like a carriage horse. | 34 |
| Jumpy as a cat. | 35 |
| Keen as a sword. | 36 |
| Leaking like a lobster-pot. | 37 |
| Leaps like a bared sword. | 38 |
| Leap like trout in May. | 39 |
| Limber as a frog. | 40 |
| Limp as a chewed rag. | 41 |
| March like an endless rhyme. | 42 |
| Are mixed as the mist of some devilish dream. | 43 |
| Noiseless as a black shadow. | 44 |
| Prancing like a bean-fed horse. | 45 |
| Quietly as a cloud. | 46 |
| Quivered … as a breakwater-pile quivers to the rush of landward-racing seas. | 47 |
| Quivering like a man’s hand when he raises it to say good-bye. | 48 |
| My head rang like a guard-room gong. | 49 |
| Rang like a musket-butt on flagstones. | 50 |
Loud-voiced and reckless as the wide tide-race
That whips our harbor-mouth! | 51 |
| Red as slaughter. | 52 |
| A single roar like the roar of a mortar-battery. | 53 |
| Roar … like the sound of a beast in pain. | 54 |
| The pile of fish … shone like a dump of fluid silver. | 55 |
| Shot like a rabbit in a ride. | 56 |
| Shrank as the beetle shrinks beneath the pin when village children stab him in their sport. | 57 |
| Silently as a cloud rolls out of the mouth of a valley. | 58 |
| Singing … like the shouting of a backstay in a gale. | 59 |
| The erect body sank like a sword driven home into the scabbard. | 60 |
| Slid like an evil dream. | 61 |
| Slow as a worm. | 62 |
| Snore like over-gorged humans. | 63 |
| Solemn as putty. | 64 |
| Soothing as the wash of the sea. | 65 |
| Lightning spattered the sky as a thrown egg spatters a barn door. | 66 |
| Still as beggars at the gate of greatness. | 67 |
| As straight as a beggar can spit. | 68 |
| Sure as Time. | 69 |
| Tensely as the drawn wire rope of a suspension bridge. | 70 |
| Thick as butter. | 71 |
| A little thought in life is like salt upon rice. | 72 |
| Gathered herself together like a watch spring. | 73 |
| Trailing like a wounded duck. | 74 |
| Unlovely as the corpse of a man. | 75 |
| Unvexed … like the candles round a shrine. | 76 |
| Whirling like a windmill. | 77 |
| Thin-flanked woman, as white and as stale as a bone. | 78 |
| Yellow and ill-fitting as the shuck on a dried cob. | 79 |
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