"One Day In Every Year/A Hope That Is A Fear/Comes Very Near"

Although I am quite fond of the following poem by Mary Coleridge (1861-1907), I have never known quite what to make of it.  Some might say that it is an instance of Victorian "fatalism" -- along the lines of, say, Christina Rossetti or Thomas Hardy.  Perhaps.  (Bearing in mind that one person's "fatalism" is another person's "realism," "level-headedness," or, even, "wisdom.")

However, a good poem can never be "explained" by a single word (or by any number of words, for that matter) -- if, indeed, it can be "explained" at all without draining it of life.  In fact, Mary Coleridge makes this point very well in the following observation (which is about poetry in general, not about the poem at hand):

"There are some words that are like a flight of steps that end in mid-air, and there is nothing but the sky above them."

Edith Sichel (editor), Gathered Leaves from the Prose of Mary E. Coleridge (1910), page 252.

                                    Charles Holmes, "Bude Canal" (1915)

  One Day in Every Year

One day in every year
A hope that is a fear
Comes very near.

Once, every year, I say,
"Less long now the delay
Shorter the way."

Whether for joy or woe
I say that this is so
I do not know.

Only one thing is clear:
A hope that is a fear
Comes near.

Theresa Whistler (editor), The Collected Poems of Mary Coleridge (1954).

                     Charles Holmes, "The Yellow Wall, Blackburn" (1932)

As for the "meaning" of the poem, something that Coleridge wrote elsewhere may or may not be helpful:

"Birthdays now seem to me to be like the lamp-posts along a road, when you are nearing the end of a long, dark, delicious drive, and however tired you may be, are still absolutely uninclined to make the effort of getting out of the comfortable home of a carriage, and settling yourself in a new house."

Edith Sichel (editor), Gathered Leaves from the Prose of Mary E. Coleridge (1910), page 43.

This is interesting, but I am content to stick with "a flight of steps that end in mid-air, and there is nothing but the sky above them."

                            Charles Holmes, "A Moorland Road" (1923)