West Virginia
By Roy Lee Harmon
This was no land for lily-fingered men
Who bowed and danced a neat quadrille,
In towns and cities far beyond the ken
Of mountaineers–who loved each rock and rill.
It was a place for lean, tall men with love
For freedom flowing strongly in their veins,
For those attuned to vagrant stars above,
To rugged peaks, deep snows, and June-time rains.
And so our State was whelped in time of strife
And cut its teeth upon a cannon ball;
Its heritage was cleaner, better life,
Within the richest storehouse of them all.
With timber, oil and gas and salt and coal,
It bargained in the world’s huge marketplace.
The mountain empire reached a mighty goal;
It never ran a pauper’s sordid race.
And best of all, it sire a hardy flock
Whose fame will grow with centuries to be,
Tough as a white-oak stump or limestone rock,
The mountaineers who always shall be free.
