A famous metaphor of mental processes from Aeneid 8.18-25 (Ahl’s translation below):
Talia per Latium. quae Laomedontius heros
cuncta videns magno curarum fluctuat aestu,
atque animum nunc huc celerem nunc dividit illuc
in partisque rapit varias perque omnia versat:
sicut aquae tremulum labris ubi lumen aënis
sole repercussum aut radiantis imagine lunae
omnia pervolitat late loca, iamque sub auras
erigitur summique ferit laquearia tecti.
Such is the tally of Latium’s ills. Once Laomedon’s kinsman
Drinks in this vision, the hero is swept on a swell of emotions,
Scurrying thoughts into this or that channel of choice and decision,
Surging in random directions, examining every perspective,
Just as the shimmering light from a watery surface in bronze-lipped
Cauldrons—itself but reflected sun, or the radiant, mirrored
Face of the moon—ripples all round a room, leaps up through the yielding
Air where it flickers on fretted beams panelled high on the ceiling.
Which is a certain imitation of Apollonius’ Argonautica 3.750-760 (in Race’s now Loeb translation):
But by no means had sweet sleep overtaken Medea, because in her longing for Jason many anxieties kept her awake, as she dreaded the great strength of the oxen that were going to make him die a horrid death in the field of Ares. Over and over the heart within her breast fluttered wildly, as when a ray of sunlight bounds inside a house as it leaps from water freshly poured into a cauldron or perhaps into a bucket, and quivers and darts here and there from the rapid swirling—thus did the girl’s heart tremble in her breast.
ἀλλὰ μάλ᾿ οὐ Μήδειαν ἐπὶ γλυκερὸς λάβεν ὕπνος·
πολλὰ γὰρ Αἰσονίδαο πόθῳ μελεδήματ᾿ ἔγειρεν
δειδυῖαν ταύρων κρατερὸν μένος, οἷσιν ἔμελλεν
φθίσθαι ἀεικελίῃ μοίρῃ κατὰ νειὸν Ἄρηος.
πυκνὰ δέ οἱ κραδίη στηθέων ἔντοσθεν ἔθυιεν,
ἠελίου ὥς τίς τε δόμοις ἐνιπάλλεται αἴγλη
ὕδατος ἐξανιοῦσα, τὸ δὴ νέον ἠὲ λέβητι
ἠέ που ἐν γαυλῷ κέχυται, ἡ δ᾿ ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα
ὠκείῃ στροφάλιγγι τινάσσεται ἀίσσουσα·
ὣς δὲ καὶ ἐν στήθεσσι κέαρ ἐλελίζετο κούρης.
But also a partial recollection of an image in Lucretius (4.211-213, Rouse’s Loeb text and translation)
that as soon as the brightness of water is laid in the open air under a starry sky, at once the serene constellations of the firmament answer back twinkling in the water
quod simul ac primum sub diu splendor aquaiponitur, extemplo caelo stellante serenasidera respondent in aqua radiantia mundi.
Extracts 