It is not so, I know, to me who saw last night the purple sea

The Wine-Dark Sea
by Patrick O'Brian

The ‘wine-dark sea’ a commonplace?
Poetic argot’s hollow ring?
It is not so, I know, to me
who saw last night the purple sea
the even, gently-swelling sea
unbroken, smooth and menacing.

The purple with an edge of blue,
And reddish in the after-glow
the spindrift floating on the waves:
The foaming, dark and rasping wine
they trod in vats some months ago –
These were the same. But then the moon
rose to the edge and spoilt the sea’s
wine-dark dove’s bosom: over these
the nascent stars; Aldebaran
and, half unseen, the Pleiades.