"A Light Exists in Spring" Explication

“A Light Exists in Spring”
Emily Dickinson
This, like most of her poems, is a sad poem. However, it does have a slightly lighter aspect to it. In the beginning of the poem Dickinson speaks of “a light [that] exists in spring”. This is the lighter part of the poem. Her poems are normally about her solitude or generally solemn ideas. Any light is good. She goes on to say that the light is only their in spring, which dampens the mood slightly but still leaves a chance of good. In line 7 she says that “science cannot overtake” the light. This means that science cannot describe it accurately. Only “human nature” can. The third stanza describes the light as illuminating everything and how it “almost speaks to you”; again a brighter outlook. However, in the fourth stanza she describes how It leaves suddenly “without the formula of sound; it passes, and we stay-“ .
In this poem, the light that Emily Dickinson is talking about is hope. It is hope that she will find a good life. She was a very solitary person and probably had either issues with depression or society. The light in the first 3 stanzas represents her hope for a better life, a happy, life. However, the final 2 stanzas show how she believes that hope abandons people without even a warning. The person is left more sad than before and longing for the “light” again. The title and first stanza, which state that the hope only comes once a year, either mean that the hope and chance is very rare. Or they are an allusion to an activity that happens in early march every year.