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Updated: July 14, 2025
"And around her the lamps of the sea nymphs, Myriad fiery globes, swam heaving and panting, and rainbows, Crimson and azure and emerald, were broken in star-showers, lighting Far through the wine-dark depths of the crystal, the gardens of Nereus, Coral and sea-fan and tangle, the blooms and the palms of the ocean."
Whereupon Helen made overtures to Pedro, and not wholly in vain. The dog was matured, of almost stern aloofness, and manifestly not used to people. His deep, wine-dark eyes seemed to search Helen's soul. They were honest and wise, with a strange sadness. "He looks intelligent," observed Helen, as she smoothed the long, dark ears. "That hound is nigh human," responded Dale.
Flaming over the mountains rose an unclouded sun, shining on the purple coast, with its innumerable rock-towns "tot congesta manu praeruptis oppida saxis" and sending broad paths over the "wine-dark" sea.
The high-roofed house, the brazen threshold, the polished chest, the silver-studded sword, the purple robes, the tawny oxen, the hollow ships, the tapering oars, the wine-dark sea, the rosy-fingered dawn, the gold-throned morning, Hector of the nodding plume, the white-armed Nausicaa, so in long procession moves the spectacle.
All that most marvellous work of Nature was flooded to the brim with rose and tawny-gold, with white, and wine-dark shadows; the colossal carvings as of huge rock-gods and sacrificial altars, and great beasts, along its sides, were made living by the very mystery of light and darkness, on that violent day of spring I remember sitting there, and an old gentleman passing close behind, leaning towards me and saying in a sly, gentle voice: "How are you going to tell it to the folks at home?"
It was a magnificent day, very hot but not sultry, free from sirocco. The sky was deep blue, a passionate, exciting blue that seemed vocal, as if it were saying thrilling things to the world that lay beneath it. The waveless sea was purple, a sea, indeed, of legend, a wine-dark, lustrous, silken sea.
Directly Eve saw the boy kneeling there over his tray, the cast suspended in his hand, as he leaned intently forward with the rich carmine deepening the golden tint of his brow and with that yellow fire in his wine-dark eyes, she ceased singing, and, not hesitating to mimic the well-known call, cried, "Images?"
While he was pondering on this, he beheld a swift ship on the wine-dark sea, and aboard her many men and good, Cretans from Minoan Cnossus, such as do sacrifice to the God, and speak the doom of Phoebus Apollo of the Golden Sword, what word soever he utters of sooth from the daphne in the dells of Parnassus.
There is an isle, Ogygia, that lies far off in the sea; there dwells the daughter of Atlas, crafty Calypso, of the braided tresses, an awful goddess, nor is any either of gods or mortals conversant with her. Howbeit, some god brought me to her hearth, wretched man that I am, all alone, for that Zeus with white bolt crushed my swift ship and cleft it in the midst of the wine-dark deep.
At these falls there was one sunset of angry splendor; and we contrasted this going down of the sun, through broken rain-clouds and over leagues of wet tropical forest, with the desert sunsets we had seen in Arizona and Sonora, and along the Guaso Nyiro north and west of Mount Kenia, when the barren mountains were changed into flaming "ramparts of slaughter and peril" standing above "the wine-dark flats below."
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