six acres, that ravine, those trees, that aspect of the little mothering
town; the wooded hills fold above fold, the noble range beyond, will not
be mine.

For all I know, some man quite unacquainted with that land took them
grumbling for a debt; or again, for all I know, they may have been
bought by a blind man who could not see the hills, or by some man who,
seeing them, perpetually regretted the flat marshes of the fens. One
day, up high on Egdean Side, not thinking of such things, through a gap
in the trees I saw again after so many years, set one behind the other,
the forests wave upon wave, the summer heat, the high, bare range
guarding all, and in the midst of that landscape, set like a toy, the
little Sabine Farm.

Then I said to it, "Continue. Go and serve whom you will, my little
Sabine Farm. You were not mine because you would not be, and you are not
mine at all to-day. You will regret it perhaps, and perhaps you will
not. There was verse in you, perhaps, or prose, or--infinitely
more!--contentment for a man (for all I know). But you refused. You lost
your chance. Goodbye." And with that I went on into the wood and beyond
the gap, and saw the sight no more.

It was ten years since I had seen it last. It may be ten years before I
see it again, or it may be for ever. But as I went through the woods
saying to myself:

"You lost your chance, my little Sabine Farm, you lost your chance!"
another part of me at once replied:

"Ah! And so did _you_!"