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Success Is Counted Sweetest
Project Gutenberg eBook #12242, Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete
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Source: Project Gutenberg eBook #12242, Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete Source URL: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12242 Public domain basis: Complete text of the three posthumous series edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson (1890, 1891, 1896), with their editorial titles and regularized punctuation. Public domain. Coverage: Complete individual poem extracted from parent edition poems-of-emily-dickinson at bytes 6461-6892; checksum 593eee2dc123abe88015401ce33ce9d6489a215660503e47cb68f6cd435ecc0c.
# Success Is Counted Sweetest
Success Is Counted Sweetest
I.
SUCCESS.
[Published in "A Masque of Poets" at the request of "H.H.," the author's fellow-townswoman and friend.]
Success is counted sweetest By those who ne'er succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple host Who took the flag to-day Can tell the definition, So clear, of victory,
As he, defeated, dying, On whose forbidden ear The distant strains of triumph Break, agonized and clear!