The Samuel Bryan Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (NDAR) would like to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the Indiana State Poem. The poem was written by Arthur Franklin Mapes, a Hoosier poet from Kendallville, Indiana, who lived between 16 March 1913 and January 4, 1986. Among his works is the poem “Indiana,” which was adopted as the Official State Poem of Indiana in 1963.
Indiana Code: IC 1-2-5-1
Sec. 1. The poem of Arthur Franklin Mapes, Kendallville, Indiana, the title and text of which are set forth in full as a part of this section, is hereby adopted as Indiana’s official poem. It reads as follows:
INDIANA
God crowned her hills with beauty,
Gave her lakes and winding streams,
Then He edged them all with woodlands
As the setting for our dreams.
Lovely are her moonlit rivers,
Shadowed by the sycamores,
Where the fragrant winds of Summer
Play along the willowed shores.
I must roam those wooded hillsides,
I must heed the native call,
For a pagan voice within me
Seems to answer to it all.
I must walk where squirrels scamper
Down a rustic old rail fence,
Where a choir of birds is singing
In the woodland . . . green and dense.
I must learn more of my homeland
For it’s paradise to me,
There’s no haven quite as peaceful,
There’s no place I’d rather be.
Indiana . . . is a garden
Where the seeds of peace have grown,
Where each tree, and vine, and flower
Has a beauty . . . all its own.
Lovely are the fields and meadows,
That reach out to hills that rise
Where the dreamy Wabash River
Wanders on . . . through paradise.
