Success is counted sweetest

Dickinson again! She's got a lot of poetry that's really easy to read and understand, at least superficially, so let's look at another, "Success is 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 to-day
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!

The message is pretty clear--we don't appreciate things that we have so much as things we lack. And isn't it the truth?

I'd argue that this is one of Dickinson's more straightforward poems. There are a few tricks, though. Let's look at the jump from the second stanza to the third. If we look at the second stanza in isolation, it reads that none of the victors of the the battle can tell the definition of victory, and that definition is "so clear". But taken together with the third, we might rewrite it like this:

"Not one . . . can tell the definition of victory so clear as he, defeated, dying . . ."

That is, the poem reads that the one who was defeated is better able to understand the definition of victory than those who triumphed. Why do I point out the partial reading given by the second stanza, then? I think this is important--Dickinson didn't just write an incomplete though in the second stanza because she was absent-minded. Rather, the implication that the definition of victory is "so clear" and yet the victors themselves cannot tell it is very important. The implication is that because of their victory the victors cannot tell what is so clear even to the speaker of the poem.

Dickinson implies that not only do we better appreciate what we lack, but that by gaining a thing, we lose some appreciation of it.

Isn't it bleak?