Indiana

Arthur Franklin Mapes was an Indiana poet who lived in Kendalville, Indiana and wrote often of his home state. In 1963, Mapes wrote the poem "Indiana," which would be officially adopted as Indiana's state poem. In 1977, Mapes would be given the title of Indiana's first poet laureate. Mapes died on Jan. 4, 1986, at the age of 72.

I learned this information today as I searched for a good poem for this video, which I took last week as you and I were walking around Fort Harrison State Park. I think that it is a fitting poem.

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.

(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.)