They are a curious and most native stock, The lanky men, the lost, forgotten seeds Spilled from the first great wave-march toward the West And set to sprout by chance in the deep cracks Of that hill-billy world of laurel-bells. They keep the beechwood-fiddle and the salt Old-fashioned ballad-English of our first Rowdy, corn-liquor-drinking, ignorant youth; Also the rifle and the frying-pan, The old feud-temper and the old feud-way Of thinking strangers better shot on sight But treating strangers that one leaves unshot With border-hospitality. The girls Have the brief-blooming, rhododendron-youth Of pioneer women, and the black-toothed age. And if you yearn to meet your pioneers, You’ll find them there, the same men, inbred sons Of inbred sires perhaps, but still the same; A pioneer-island in a world that has No use for pioneers⁠—the unsplit rock Of Fundamentalism, calomel, Clan-virtues, clannish vices, fiddle-tunes And a hard God.