Emily Dickinson looks at life from a unique perspective, making bizarre claims that often turn out to be accurate and show valuable insight into reality.
Dickinson’s poem “Success is counted sweetest” consists of three stanzas, each with a rime scheme of ABCB. The theme of the poem is that only those who have not been successful think that success is so important. The loser is the one who continues to crave success as the winner fades into a neutral state of emotion.
First Stanza: “Success is counted sweetest”
In the first stanza, the speaker declares that it is only those who “ne’er succeed” who have the notion that success is the best thing possible, or “counted sweetest.” Those who have not succeeded are the ones who crave it the most. They especially crave success more than the successful ones, because once one has succeeded the desire then dies.
And to understand how a desire works, one needs to have that desire: “To comprehend a nectar / Requires sorest need.” “A nectar” metaphorically represents the thing that is desired. Nectar is anything that is sweet, such as the secretions of flowers that attract bees. The term originates in mythology as the life-giving drink given by the gods.
Second Stanza: “Not one of all the purple Host”
In the second stanza, the speaker dramatizes a field victory as in hockey or football, saying that the winners cannot clearly state a definition of victory. “Purple Host” refers to the winning team. Some writers have asserted that Dickinson was referring to a Civil War battle in this poem, but she composed this poem 1859— two years before the Civil War began.
The second stanza is actually part of a complex sentence that continues into the third stanza.
Third Stanza: “As he defeated — dying”
As the second stanza began, the victors do not clearly understand victory. The third stanza finishes the thought. Those victors do not understand victory as well as the defeated understand it.
The speaker here exaggerates the notion of the defeated by saying they lay “dying”—this exaggeration is one of the reasons that readers may misunderstand and claim that the speaker is referring to a Civil War battle. But the ”forbidden ear” is not literally dying but merely suffering the defeat. To those who lost the game, according to this speaker, those “distant strains of triumph / Burt agonized and clear!”
The losers hear the cheering and the music played in the winners’ honor with different clarity than the winners do. The loser, by suffering defeat still has in his heart the deep desire to win, while the winners can merely wallow in the glow of victory.
Other Dickinson articles:
- Dickinson’s Summer
- “A Bird came down the Walk”: Dickinson’s Frightened Beads
- Dickinson’s Spiritual Intoxication
- Dickinson’s Riddles
- Looking Back from Eternity
- The Nun of Amherst
- Emily's Brain
