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

Robert Burns

Bare as winter.

Her breath is like the fragrant breeze,
That gently stirs the blossom’d bean,
When Phœbus sinks beneath the seas.

Cheat like onie unhang’d blackguard.

Dark as misery’s woeful night.

Dear as the nurtured thrill of joy.

Fire the devout, like cantharidian plasters.

Like a passing thought, she fled.

Fled like frighted doos.

Her forehead’s like the show’ry bow,
When shining sunbeams intervene,
And gild the distant mountain’s brow.

Fresher than the morning dawn
When rising Phœbus first is seen.

Frisk away,
Like school-boys, at th’ expected warning,
To joy and play.

Gay as the gilded summer sky.

Her hair is like the curling mist
That shades the mountain-side at e’en.

Light as any lambie.

Her lips are like the cherries ripe
That sunny walls of Boreas screen.
They tempt the taste and charm the sight.

Oh, my luve is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
Oh, my luve is like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.

Merry as a kitten.

Pale like only lily.

But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white—then melts for ever;
Or like the borealis race,
That flit ere you can point their place;
Or like the rainbow’s lovely form,
Evanishing amid the storm.

Relent her
As blooming spring unbends the brow
Of surly, savage winter.

Shift, like fortune’s favours.

Slip frae me like a knotless thread.

Her smile was like a summer morn.

Spotless as the flow’ring thorn.

Sweet as the dewy milk-white thorn.

Sweet as yon hawthorn’s blossom.

Her teeth are like a flock of sheep,
With fleeces newly washen clean,
That slowly mount the rising steep.

Threatening … like precipices.

Tripped … as light’s a bird upon a thorn.

Her voice is like the evening thrush
That sings in Cessnock banks unseen,
While his mate sits nestling in the bush.

As white’s a daisy.

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