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Emily DickinsonA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“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.
By Emily Dickinson
A Bird, came down the Walk
Emily Dickinson
A Clock stopped—
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A narrow Fellow in the Grass (1096)
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Because I Could Not Stop for Death
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"Faith" is a fine invention
Emily Dickinson
Fame Is a Fickle Food (1702)
Emily Dickinson
Hope is a strange invention
Emily Dickinson
"Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers
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I Can Wade Grief
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I Felt a Cleaving in my Mind
Emily Dickinson
I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain
Emily Dickinson
If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking
Emily Dickinson
If I should die
Emily Dickinson
If you were coming in the fall
Emily Dickinson
I heard a Fly buzz — when I died
Emily Dickinson
I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
Emily Dickinson
Much Madness is divinest Sense—
Emily Dickinson
Tell all the truth but tell it slant
Emily Dickinson
The Only News I Know
Emily Dickinson
There is no Frigate like a Book
Emily Dickinson