9 Northwest Indiana economic development projects win state support

A 1963 law enacted by the General Assembly designated “Indiana,” by Arthur Franklin Mapes, of Kendallville, as the official state 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.

(Photo provided by U.S. Postal Service)