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Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Success


              1Success is counted sweetest
              2By those who ne'er succeed.
              3To comprehend a nectar
              4Requires sorest need.

              5Not one of all the purple host
              6Who took the flag to-day
              7Can tell the definition,
              8So clear, of victory,

              9As he, defeated, dying,
            10On whose forbidden ear
            11The distant strains of triumph
            12Break, agonized and clear.

Notes

1] "Published in `A Masque of Poets' at the request of `H. H.,' the author's fellow-townswoman and friend" (note by Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson, the editors).

12] Break: the extant manuscript version, poem 67, reads "Burst". See The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson, edited by R. W. Franklin in two volumes (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1981: I, 76; PS 1541 A1 1981 ROBA).


Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: Poems (1890-1896) by Emily Dickinson: A Facsimile Reproduction of the Original Volumes Issued in 1890, 1891, and 1896, with an Introduction by George Monteiro (Gainesville, Florida: Scholars' Facsimiles).
First publication date: 1878
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 1997.
Recent editing: 2:2002/6/7

Composition date: 1859
Rhyme: abcb


Other poems by Emily Dickinson