I remember that "On the Sublime" references the phrase wine-dark, and considers it prototypically sublime. I think the metaphor is inherently mysterious, as all

I remember that "On the Sublime" references the phrase wine-dark, and considers it prototypically sublime. I think the metaphor is inherently mysterious, as all good metaphors are. c.f., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Sublime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Sublime edit - found the passage How unlike to this the expression which is used of Sorrow by Hesiod, if indeed the Shield is to be attributed to Hesiod: Rheum from her nostrils was trickling. (Shield of Heracles 267) The image he has suggested is not terrible but rather loathsome. Contrast the way in which Homer magnifies the higher powers: And far as a man with his eyes through the sea-line haze may discern, On a cliff as he sitteth and gazeth away o’er the wine-dark deep, So far at a bound do the loud-neighing steeds of the Deathless leap. (Iliad 5. 770) He makes the vastness of the world the measure of their leap. The sublimity is so overpowering as naturally to prompt the exclamation that if the divine steeds were to leap thus twice in succession they would pass beyond the confines of the world.