Success is Ne'er Counted Sweetest

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 today
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

I always adore Emily Dickinson’s poems for their subtle tone of sorrow and irony. The poems are able to deliver dark atmosphere as something romantic. Call me stupid, but for me, she is in the same level with Edgar Allan Poe in the ability of creating a beauty out of somber and dark theme. Death, sorrow, agony, and regret.

This is one of the poems that Dickinson wrote to ilustrate that the winner will never know the taste and glory of winning without tasting the lost. You have to taste something bitter to be able to appreciate the sweetness. If one is spoilt in the whole sweetness all the time, one will never be know how precious that is. Just like she said in the third and fourth line, to comprehend a nectar requires sorest need.

When one is marinated by the bitter and sorrow, one will be able to appreciate and keep the sweet that one has. No matter how small is it, no matter how insignificant it is. The sweetness and victory will be the ultimate prize, for one has been dreaming over it, no matter how trivial it is. And there will be a great struggle to maintain and keep the treasure. After going through all the blood and wound, the person who reaches the dream after so many failures will see it as something worth to fight. As something as precious as one’s own life.

One example, a very cliché one, came from the field of romance. Let’s just say that when someone who kept being rejected and having the heart broken will always try to keep the feeling of his or her lover. One will try to keep the relationship, since one knows that it is precious. After all the pain and wound that one has gone through, one will fight to the last blood to keep the happiness. But when someone never felt the rejection and is always placed and seen as the centre of the world, the idol, then one would never know how to appreciate the relationship. This person might think that it is okay to break people’s heart, for there are so many people wanting him / her. Then, there will be no effort to maintain the relationship.