Questions for "Success is counted Sweetest"

1. According to the speaker, who is likely to count success as sweetest? Do you think the poet is accurate in describing the feelings of people who fail?
2. Purple is a color associated with blood shed in battle (the Purple Heart medal is given to soldiers wounded or killed in action). It is also a color associated with royalty and nobility. What do you think is the “purple Host” in line 5?
3. Whose ear is mentioned in line 10? Why is the ear “forbidden”?
4. Describe the image you see in the last stanza. How could this image be extended to refer to other situations in life? Explain.
5. Have you ever been like the soldier in the last stanza – in agony because someone else is proclaimed the winner? What other circumstances in life (other than a wartime battle) could this situation be applied to? (Could it describe the feelings of a poet who could not publish her work?)

"Success is counted Sweetest", by Emily Dickinson

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
Burst agonized and clear!