Pipped at the post

I've been so missing our trips over to the Torridon cottage, which I understand is off-limits just now, due to it not being our 'primary residence'.

So I asked Gail when she thinks these coronavirus restrictions might be lifted. She sighed and said:

"I don't know Bertie, I guess we just need to be patient and remember we're lucky to have such a beautiful, peaceful retreat, however long we have to wait to go there again."

I wondered perhaps if I might write a poem to express the yearning to escape from the city to a haven of water-side tranquillity, but Gail pointed out that I'd been pipped at the post by Irish poet William Butler Yeats. Here's the last verse of his 'The Lake of Innisfree' (1888).

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds on the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, and on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

I guess Mr Yeats put it even better than I could have.

(photo taken last year)