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

Melancholy

Melancholy as a graveyard on a rainy day.
—Anonymous

Melancholy as a hearse-plume.
—Anonymous

Melancholy as a mourning-coach in a snowstorm.
—Anonymous

Melancholy as a squeezed lemon.
—Anonymous

Melancholy as a tailor.
—Anonymous

Melancholy as the moon at full.
—Philip James Bailey

Melancholy as a Quaker meeting-house by moonlight.
—J. R. Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms

Melancholy … like a gamester that has lost his money.
—Beaumont and Fletcher

Melancholy as a cow.
—George H. Boker

Melancholy as Monks and Hermits.
—Robert Burton

Melancholy as Irish melodies.
—Bliss Carman

Melancholy as an unbraced drum.
—Mrs. Susannah Centlivre

Melancholy sound … like the weeping of a solitary, deserted human heart.
—Guy de Maupassant

Melancholy as a slighted damsel.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Melancholy, like the voice of a child that was spending its infancy without playfulness.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne

Melancholic as midnight.
—Ben Jonson

Melancholy as a cat.
—John Lyly

A melancholy strain,
Like the low moaning of the distant sea.
—Edgar Allan Poe

Melancholy as a gib cat.
—William Shakespeare

Melancholy as a lodge in a warren.
—William Shakespeare