Billows that boom like the sea ...

We were lucky, last night. The winds of Storm Henry were coming directly from the west, and Dunoon faces east, with the hills behind the town protecting us from the worst of them. Even the sea was being blown away from our shores. But today, as the rain stopped and the sun came out, we walked along the western, sheltered side of Loch Eck and saw how even then the surface was being whipped up in the remnants of the gale. 

And that is where my title comes from, lurking in a corner of my mind as the sheep in this photo are lurking in a corner of their field. It's a line from Virgil, Georgics 2.160, describing Lake Garda in Northern Italy which, like Loch Eck, is surrounded for much of its length by mountains. Winds can whip up its surface too, until, as Virgil says ..."it rises into billows that boom like the sea."

I don't know the Latin, I'm afraid - I could look it up, but it's late. I remembered the line from a wonderful book, Poets in a Landscape, by Gilbert Highet - I recommend it to anyone interested in Latin, poetry or simply beautiful prose.