One of the elements of what Longinus (or whoever) claims makes up the sublime he calls "noble diction" — "which in turn comprises choice of words, and use of metaphors, and elaboration of language.
Here is where Cormac McCarthy excels. I must share this:
All was quiet. The birds were stilled in their first tentative and querulous chirpings. Low in the east and beyond the town a gray soulless dawn gnawed the horizon into shape. (p.97)
The imagery alone is incredibly drawn, a day dawning colorless until the separation of earth and sky is seen, ragged (gnawed into shape) treeline and mountain. But with McCarthy, you can take more from this: gray and soulless would indicate a continuation of a life without hope, as if the heavens had given up on God and man alike. Gnawed the horizon into shape seems to offer a power that controls, but with either the toying with life, as a dog worries a bone, or the hunger to consume it all and nearly suck out the marrow–depending upon your interpretation of the verb to gnaw. What does that mean for the world, and the men in McCarthy’s story that live within it?
There is little doubt that McCarthy places well within this element of the sublime, in language alone. And for me, he reaches as well into the "first and most important (is) the power of forming great conceptions." (The Sublime) For what greater conception is there than the natural world, and this is one of McCarthy’s constants, his focus on the land as a setting for his characters.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology