Favorite Poem 3 - Success!

It's an overcast Saturday morning, and I really would rather be doing something else right now, but, I'm the one who procrastinated! Okay here's yet another of my favorite poems. I have one favorite poetry book, and all my favorites are marked. I read them in the bathtub. Way too much information.

Emily Dickinson's, Success is counted sweetest:

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a necter
Requires sorest need.

Not one of 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
Burst agonized and clear!

I always wondered why she capitalized Host, Flag, and Victory in the second stanza.

Favorite Poem 2

I know there can technically be only one favorite, but I don't care... I'm breaking the rules. Here's Tennyson's, The Splendor Falls on Castle Walls :

The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying.
Blow, bugle, answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying.
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river;
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.