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Emily DickinsonSuccess Is Counted Sweetest
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1864A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Form and Meter
“Success is counted sweetest” appears in three separate quatrains, or three separate groupings of four lines each. The lines do not follow a strict rhyme scheme, as slant rhyme, or near rhyme, occurs throughout the poem. In the first stanza, it is the second and fourth lines that rhyme “succeed” with “need.” This is a masculine rhyme, meaning it is a rhyme on the sound of the final syllable (“eed”). In the second stanza, this pattern slightly alters with the slant, or, near, rhyme of “today” (Line 6) and “victory” (Line 8). The slant rhyme serves to draw more attention to the final word of this stanza, putting the emphasis on “victory” (Line 8) and the victors who have achieved success. In the final stanza, this rhyming pattern returns to normal with the second and fourth lines rhyming, specifically employing masculine rhyme: “ear” (Line 10) and “clear” (Line 12).
An evaluation of the meter of the poem reveals that most of the lines alternate between iambic trimeter and lines that use iambic trimeter with an extra unstressed syllable attached to the end. An iamb is a unit of poetry known as a poetic “foot” that consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Trimeter simply means that there are three of these units. One example of a line written in iambic trimeter is the second line, which reads, “By those who ne’er succeed.” The fourth line in this first stanza also features iambic trimeter, while the first and third lines follow this iambic trimeter pattern but with an extra unstressed syllable on the end. For example, Line 1 reads, “Success is counted sweetest.” The third stanza of the poem follows this same pattern, alternating the lines between one using iambic pentameter with an extra unstressed syllable added, and ones in straightforward iambic pentameter. Those lines written with an unstressed syllable end with a downbeat, while those that end on a stressed syllable end more upbeat. This meter matches the themes of defeat and success, of pessimism and optimism, being discussed in the poem.
The only line which does not fall into this meter is the first line of the second stanza. Rather than iambic trimeter, this line appears in iambic tetrameter, meaning there are four units of unstressed/stressed syllables: “Not one of all the purple Host” (Line5). The rest of the lines in the stanza follow the pattern of iambic trimeter with extra unstressed syllable pattern. The divergence to iambic tetrameter in line 5 puts emphasis on the victor, on the individual(s) who achieved the coveted success. However, the “Not one” placed at the beginning of the line immediately sets up a negative by leading with “Not.” Readers become aware that the victor is under discussion, but also that they are guilty of a shortcoming: their inability to appreciate and identify the experience of success and victory.
Extended Metaphor
An extended metaphor is one which does not simply occur over a single line, but rather occurs over a number of lines or even stanzas. At its most basic level, a metaphor compares two dissimilar things in order to make a point. In the first stanza of Dickinson’s poem, one extended metaphor that stretches over the last two lines is the comparison of “nectar” (Line 3) to success. Just as nectar or sustenance is most appreciated by those who don’t have it, so also is success.
The next metaphorical representation of success is the militaristic depiction of the “purple Host” (Line 5) achieving “the Flag” (Line 6) over the “defeated” (Line 9). The “purple Host” represent this desired success that the defeated do not attain. Overall, the use of success assists in making an abstract topic and noun, something intangible like “success,” more comprehensible for readers. By giving readers scenarios and more physical examples of success, Dickinson draws the reader more into the text and allows them to better grasp the themes of the poem.
Consonance and Assonance
Consonance can be defined as the repetition of consonant sounds within words that do not necessarily appear at the beginning of the words. Assonance, on the other hand, is the opposite: the repetition of vowel sounds within words. An example of consonance in Dickinson’s poem occurs in the first line of the poem: “Success is counted sweetest.” Readers can clearly hear and trace the repetition of “s” sounds through the line. An example of of assonance occurs in the sixth line: “Who took the Flag today.” The use of both consonance and assonance, which are two opposites, mirrors the binary of success and the absence of success portrayed in the poem. Also, the repetitions of sound through assonance and consonance help to maintain the pace of the poem.
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By Emily Dickinson
