I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –

By Emily Dickinson

“I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –” is Emily Dickinson’s poem of about 1862, spoken by a dead woman remembering her last moments, when a buzzing fly came between her and the light. It runs 16 lines in four quatrains, and it was first published in 1896, ten years after her death, in Poems: Third Series.

Our reading: the deathbed is staged for the arrival of God, and a fly shows up instead. Dickinson does not tell us what that means. She simply records the last thing the speaker saw, and the poem stops where her sight does.

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Summary · The Poem · Background · Analysis and Themes · Form and Technique · Notable Lines · Themes · FAQ
Glossary · Related Poems

Summary

A speaker who has already died looks back on her deathbed. The room is hushed, the mourners have cried themselves out, and everyone is holding their breath for “the King,” the holy presence expected at the moment of death. She has made her will and signed away her possessions.

Then a fly arrives. Its clumsy buzzing comes between her and the light, the “Windows” fail, and she can no longer see. The poem ends there, with no King, no vision, and no word about what came next.

The Poem

I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air –
Between the Heaves of Storm –

The Eyes around – had wrung them dry –
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset – when the King
Be witnessed – in the Room –

I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable – and then it was
There interposed a Fly –

With Blue – uncertain – stumbling Buzz –
Between the light – and me –
And then the Windows failed – and then
I could not see to see –

Background

Dickinson wrote the poem around 1862 or 1863, during the most productive stretch of her life. Like nearly all her poems, it was not published while she lived. It first appeared in 1896 in Poems: Third Series, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd, under the title “Dying.” Todd, like Dickinson’s other early editors, smoothed the punctuation and capitals, and the poem was not printed as Dickinson wrote it until Thomas H. Johnson’s edition of 1955.

In Dickinson’s New England, the deathbed was a public, religious event. Family gathered to watch for signs that the dying person was at peace and bound for heaven, and final words and last moments were recorded and retold. The poem sets up exactly that scene, then refuses to deliver the expected ending. Our text follows R. W. Franklin’s edition of the manuscripts (Franklin 591), keeping Dickinson’s dashes and capitals.

Analysis and Themes

The poem builds a solemn expectation, breaks it with the smallest possible intruder, and then follows the speaker’s mind to the exact point where it goes out. The dead speaker’s calm voice makes the whole scene stranger.

Where the King Was Supposed to Be

The first two stanzas stage a religious event. The room is still, the mourners’ eyes are wrung dry, and their breaths are “gathering firm / For that last Onset – when the King / Be witnessed – in the Room.” The King is God, Christ, or whatever divine presence is supposed to meet the dying soul. Every detail is waiting for him.

What comes instead is a fly. The most trivial creature in the room takes the place of the most exalted figure imaginable, and Dickinson offers no comment. “There interposed a Fly” is all she says. The formal verb “interposed,” meaning to step between or interrupt, fits the legal language the speaker has just used: “willed,” “Signed away,” and “Assignable.” The fly breaks into the proceedings of her death like an objection in court.

Blue, Uncertain, Stumbling

“With Blue – uncertain – stumbling Buzz –” is the poem’s strangest line. Blue is a color, and buzz is a sound. By giving a sound a color, Dickinson shows the senses blurring together as consciousness fails. The dashes make each quality arrive separately, in lurches, the way a fly zigzags across a room.

The fly comes “Between the light – and me.” The light is the daylight from the window, and it is also the divine light the mourners hoped she would see. The fly blocks both. The poem never says whether that light held anything. It only says that she did not get to find out.

I Could Not See to See

“And then the Windows failed” works on two levels: the windows of the room go dark, and so do the speaker’s eyes, the windows of the soul. “Failed” is a mechanical word, the language of a machine breaking down, not of a peaceful passing.

The final line, “I could not see to see,” doubles the verb. She has lost her eyesight, and she has also lost the power to understand, to see in the sense of know. The phrase folds in on itself, and the poem ends on a dash. There is no next line, no heaven, and no King: only a voice that is somehow still speaking from beyond the moment it describes.

Form and Technique

The poem has 16 lines in four quatrains of common meter, alternating lines of four beats and three beats, the same meter as many Protestant hymns. The irony is pointed: a deathbed that should be a sacred scene is written in the rhythm of church music, and the hymn ends with a fly. A typical four-beat line runs “and THEN the WIN-dows FAILED – and THEN.”

Dickinson’s dashes give the poem the stop-and-start motion of a fly in flight, and the repeated “and then” in the last two lines keeps the sequence going past the point where we expect it to stop. Most of the rhymes are slant rhymes, such as “Room” and “Storm,” and “firm” and “Room.” The only full rhyme in the poem, “me” and “see,” falls in the last stanza, so the sound finally resolves at the moment the sight goes out.

Notable Lines

Three passages carry the poem from sacred expectation to blank ending.

For that last Onset – when the King
Be witnessed – in the Room –

Lines 7 to 8

The expectation the whole room is holding. “Onset” sounds like the start of a battle or an illness, which gives even the holy moment a threatening edge.

Assignable – and then it was
There interposed a Fly –

Lines 11 to 12

The substitution. The line break after “it was” holds us in suspense, and what fills the King’s place is a fly.

And then the Windows failed – and then
I could not see to see –

Lines 15 to 16

The ending. Sight fails, then understanding fails, and the poem stops on a dash, with nothing after it.

Themes

Death. The poem imagines the moment of dying from the inside, as a slow shutting down of the senses rather than a passage to somewhere else.

Faith and doubt. Everyone in the room expects God to appear. The poem neither confirms nor denies that he exists; it only shows that he did not come when expected.

The ordinary against the sacred. A common housefly, a symbol of decay, interrupts a solemn religious scene, and the physical world gets the last word.

Perception. The poem is about seeing and not seeing, and it ends at the exact point where the speaker can no longer perceive anything at all.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions readers most often ask about Dickinson’s poem.

What Is “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –” About?

It is about the moment of death, told by a speaker who has already died. Her family waits for God to appear at her deathbed, but a buzzing fly comes between her and the light, and then she can no longer see.

What Does the Fly Symbolize?

The fly stands for the ordinary physical world and for decay, since flies gather around the dead. It takes the place of “the King,” the divine presence everyone expected, so it also suggests doubt about what waits after death.

Is the Speaker Already Dead?

Yes. The first line, “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died,” is in the past tense, so the speaker is remembering her own death. Dickinson never explains how a dead woman is able to speak.

When Was “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –” Written?

It was written around 1862 or 1863. It was first published in 1896, ten years after Dickinson’s death, in Poems: Third Series.

What Is the Theme of the Poem?

The main theme is death and the uncertainty of what follows it. The poem sets up a religious deathbed scene and lets a fly replace the expected arrival of God, leaving the question of an afterlife unanswered.

Glossary

• Heaves of Storm (line 4): The gusts of a storm, with a hushed pause between them.
• wrung them dry (line 5): Cried until no tears were left.
• Onset (line 7): An arrival or beginning, with overtones of an attack or the start of an illness.
• the King (line 7): God or Christ, the divine presence expected at a deathbed.
• Assignable (line 11): Able to be legally handed over to someone else, like property in a will.
• interposed (line 12): Came between; interrupted.

Related Poems

• Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson: The companion poem, in which death is a courteous carriage driver rather than a fly, and the speaker again speaks from beyond the grave.
• I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain by Emily Dickinson: Another poem that tracks a mind as it breaks down, ending, like this one, in a sudden drop into nothing.
• Death Be Not Proud by John Donne: A confident sonnet that mocks death with Christian faith, the certainty Dickinson’s poem refuses to offer.
• Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats: A poet listens to a creature’s song at the edge of consciousness and death, a beautiful bird where Dickinson gives us a fly.