Success Is Counted Sweetest

“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.