"Success is counted sweetest" By Emily Dickinson [Analysis]

Success is counted sweetest[1] By those who ne'er succeed.[2] To comprehend a nectar[3] Requires sorest need.[4] Not one of all the purple Host[5] Who took the Flag today[6] Can tell the definition[7] So clear of Victory[8] As he defeated -- dying --[9] On whose forbidden ear[10] The distant strains of triumph[11] Burst agonized and clear![12]
Poem 67 [F112] "Success is counted sweetest" Analysis by David Preest [Poem]

Apart from her Valentines, this was the first poem of Emily's to be published. In 1876 her friend, Helen Hunt Jackson, tried to persuade her to contribute a volume of poems to a No Name series. Emily refused, but she did agree two years later to contribute one poem to a No Name anthology. This was the poem she chose, perhaps because the meaning is clear once it is realised that the 'purple Host' are the victors who have captured the enemy's flag in battle. It is not known what particular experience my have spurred her to write the poem. It may equally well have been suggested by the American Civil War or by her own personal battles against that 'Cavalry of Woe' which she mentions in poem 126. George Whicher points out how the poem begins with two statements of two lines each, with 'sweetest' in the first statement leading to 'nectar' in the second statement, and then swells and expands into an eight line example of her theme.
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