The Road to the Spring: Collected Poems of Mary Austin

The Covenant

292 The Covenant This poem was written on the day the good news came from California and read for the first time by the author at the jubilee meeting at Cooper Union in New York. Long have we looked for a sign, my land, that we are thy daughters indeed, Who are not born of the blood, but yet at thy knee were nursed, Who are only foster kin to that stalwart, strenuous breed Who of the men of all lands shall yet be called finest and first; Mother of mountains, thou who has mothered us at our need, Now is the covenant sealed that we are thy daughters indeed. Gladly we sprang to thy call from the world-rims east and south, Loving and working thy will from the coastwise hills to the sea, Loving the light of thy skies and the kiss of thy golden mouth— But long in despite of our loving you pushed us off from your knee, Denied us the wages we won in the sun and the sand and the drought, Wrong didst thou then to thy daughters, wrong, O land of the West and South. But now you remit us the work of our hands, and the free untrammeled stride Neck and neck with the men we bore. Was the seed of the fruit more worth Than the willing flesh which wrapped it soft, that we walked not side by side? Could we have been feeble and fool at once, and not stamped them at the birth With the stripe that all men point to and all they decry and deride? Can you trail the bearing bough in the dust, and the fruit keep high in its pride? 293 * This is the guerdon we won in the earthquake shock and the fire, When the rip of the flames was hid where the sea wind warred with the smoke, When you wrenched at the rooted rocks, when you kindled at cornice and spire. O, nurse of the strong man-strain, did we whimper or cry at the stroke? When the gutted street was foul and sick in the slot of the racing fire, Did you hear us laugh as we fought and ran? And now you have paid us our hire! You have shaped us large to adventure, O land new-tamed, elate, Now we shall work our endeavor out, we have leave to choose and prefer; And the sign of your larger sovereignty, O Mistress of the Gate, Is the work we shall do in our city who have built our blood in her. You had shamed our pride by your ghost-grey seas round which the ranked hills wait, Had you lost us step with the strong young lands who herald the coming State. Long shall the covenant run, my land, to the sons of our sons begot, Who have felt thy pulse in the dark and drawn thee in at the breast, (Beautiful, bounteous, keen, desolate, waste and hot All that thou art and hast, known and approved of the best). This is the sword in our hand, to fight for thy ultimate need; This is the seal you have set, that we are thy daughters indeed! Editor’s Notes Woman’s Journal, October 21, 1911, 336. The magazine was, according to its masthead, the “official organ of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.” The 294 Woman’s Journal of a week earlier noted that California had voted for equal suffrage, becoming the sixth state to do so after Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Washington. Austin joined a celebration , reading her poem to an exuberant crowd. ...