| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895. |
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| A Legend |
| | | May Kendall (b. 1861) |
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| AY, an old story, yet it might | |
| Have truth in it—who knows? | |
| Of the heroine’s breaking down one night | |
| Jnst ere the curtain rose. | |
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| And suddenly, when fear and doubt | 5 |
| Had shaken every heart, | |
| There stepped an unknown actress out | |
| To take the heroine’s part. | |
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| But oh the magic of her face, | |
| And oh the songs she sung, | 10 |
| And oh the rapture in the place, | |
| And oh the flowers they flung! | |
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| But she never stooped: they lay all night | |
| As when she turned away | |
| And left them—and the saddest light | 15 |
| Shone in her eyes of gray. | |
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| She gave a smile in glancing round, | |
| And sighed, one fancied, then— | |
| But never they knew where she was bound, | |
| Or saw her face again. | 20 |
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| But the old prompter, gray and frail, | |
| They heard him murmur low: | |
| “It only could be Meg Coverdale, | |
| Died thirty years ago, | |
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| “In that old part who took the town; | 25 |
| And she was fair, as fair | |
| As when they shut the coffin down | |
| On the gleam of her golden hair; | |
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| “And it was n’t hard to understand | |
| How a lass so fair as she | 30 |
| Could never rest in the Promised Land | |
| Where none but angels be.” | |
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