|
In The Real Calvin Coolidge #10, we brought together many articles on Grace Coolidge and her poetry. Susan Webb, former Coolidge foundation president, contributed her essay to this 1994 edition. Ms. Webb wrote that Mrs. Coolidge “had begun to write poetry even in college.” (Webb, p. 19) Biographer Ishbel Ross also mentions that Grace wrote all her life and “even in her early days at the University of Vermont she liked to dash off verse.” (Ross, p. 273) Ms. Goodhue (Grace Coolidge’s maiden name) was discouraged from writing essays by one of her professors. Ishbel Ross, her biographer, mentions that when Grace wrote a paper on “Life” for a college professor, he returned it to her with the comment: “I suggest that you refrain from writing upon this subject until you have had more experience.” (Ross, p. 7)
Grace’s most well known poem was written five years after Calvin Junior’s death for Good Housekeeping Magazine. Grace contributed her poem since “I have often received letters from mothers who have shared my experience and I hope that the poem might spread comfort.” (Webb, p. 19) This was written July 7, 1929:
THE OPEN DOOR
You, my son,
Have shown me God,
Your kiss upon my cheek
Has made me feel the gentle touch
Of Him who leads us on.
The memory of your smile, when young,
Reveals His face,
As mellowing years come on apace.
And when you went before,
You left the gates of heaven ajar
That I might glimpse,
Approaching from afar,
The glories of His Grace.
Hold, son, my hand,
Guide me along the path,
That coming,
I may stumble not,
Nor roam,
Nor fail to show the way
Which leads us-Home.
Their son’s death brought out poetic instincts in Calvin, the president, as well. In his Autobiography, he lamented, “When he went the power and the glory of the Presidency went with him…I do not know why such a price was exacted for occupying the White House…” He also wrote Edward K. Hall, who had lost a son, and inscribed his Autobiography thus, “In recollection of his son and my son, who had the privilege by the grace of God to be boys through all eternity.” (Ross, p. 276)
Two other poems “appeared” after President Coolidge retired from the presidency.(Ross, p. 273)
THE QUEST
Crossing the uplands of time
Skirting the borders of night
Scaling the face of the peak of dreams,
We enter regions of light
And hastening on, with eager intent
Arrive at the rainbow’s end,
And there uncover the pot of gold
Buried deep in the heart of a friend.
WATCH-FIRES
Love was not given the human heart
For careless dealing
Its spark was lit that man
Might know Divine revealing.
Heaped up with sacrificial brands
The flame, in mounting
Enkindles other hearts with love
Beyond the counting.
Reflected back into each life
These vast fires, glowing
Do then become the perfect love
Of Christ’s bestowing.
Mr. Lawrence E. Wikander, retired curator of the Coolidge Room at Forbes Library in Northampton, MA read an unpublished poem of Grace Coolidge’s at the 1993 Annual Meeting of the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation. It was published in The Real Calvin Coolidge #10.
COMMUNION
 A quiet place, amid enfolding hills,
Green grass beneath my feet
And overhead, blue sky
With in between long, distances
To dream about;
Within a green-roofed house,
Sweet memories blessing every room;
Across the road, a small white church
Whose open door invites to prayer;
And, just around the turn,
On yonder hill, God’s plot
Where sleep His dead-and mine-
Beneath two guardian pines;
So dear a place on earth,
So near the home called heaven;
And yet, the unwise ask,
Where is thy God.
|
