I had never kissed her her whole life long,—
Now I stand by her bier, does she feel
How with love that the waiting years made strong,
I set on her lips my seal?
Will she wear my kiss in the grave’s long night,
And wake sometimes with a thrill,
From dreams of the old life’s missed delight,
To feel that the grave is chill?
“It was warm,” will she say, “in that world above;
It was warm, but I did not know
How he loved me there, with his whole life’s love,—
It is cold down here below.”
Love Poem by Louise Chandler Moulton
Meaning of the Poem ‘Beside a Bier’ by Louise Chandler Moulton
Louise Chandler Moulton’s ‘Beside a Bier’ is a poignant elegy of unspoken love and belated grief. The speaker, standing beside the body of a woman he loved in silence during her life, places a final kiss on her lips: one that carries all the passion he never expressed while she lived.
He wonders if she can now feel his love in death, and whether she might awaken in the grave with a chill, longing for the warmth of the affection she never knew he had. The poem is haunted by regret and what-ifs, imagining her in the afterlife realising only too late how deeply she was loved.
Ultimately, ‘Beside a Bier’ explores the aching sorrow of love left unspoken until it’s too late, capturing the tender desperation of trying to reach across the boundary of death with a gesture that should have come in life.
