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Home  »  A Dictionary of Similes  »  Oscar Wilde

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

Oscar Wilde

Burned like a heated opal.

Burned like the ruby fire set
In the swinging lamp of a crimson shrine.

Calm as earliest morn.

Her cheeks are as the fading stain
Where the peach reddens to the south.

Crawled like a weed-clogged wave.

Like two doomed ships that pass in storm
We had crossed each other’s way.

Curled, as when the Sirian star
Withers the ripening corn.

Drift like satin moons.

Exquisite as the coming of spring and quite as natural.

Your eyes are like fantastic moons that shiver in some stagnant lake.

Eyes half veiled …
Like bluest waters seen, through mists of rain.

His face was as the must that lies upon a vat of new-made wine.

Flits like a sudden drift of snow against the dull grey sky.

Gleams like an angry lion’s eye.

Glittering like an argent shield.

As a pomegranate, cut in twain,
White-seeded, is her crimson mouth.

Natural as sunlight on the sea.

Pass,
Like shadows through a twilight land.

Pathetic as the violets that bloom on a grave.

Shook, as the blackbird’s throat
With its last big note.

Surely and as certainly as the hawthorn must blossom in spring and the corn burn to gold at harvest time, and the moon in her ordered wanderings change from shield to sickle, and from sickle to shield.

Your tongue is like a scarlet snake that dances to fantastic tunes.

Tremulous as brook-water.

Our hedges like a wanton courtezan
Unthrifty of its beauty.

A wail
Of impotent despair,
Like the sound that frightened marshes hear
From some leper in his lair.

Whiter than a moony pearl.

Widespread as a tent at noon.

Women are like minors; they live on their expectations.