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The Full Text of “I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -”
1I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -
2The Stillness in the Room
3Was like the Stillness in the Air -
4Between the Heaves of Storm -
5The Eyes around - had wrung them dry -
6And Breaths were gathering firm
7For that last Onset - when the King
8Be witnessed - in the Room -
9I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away
10What portion of me be
11Assignable - and then it was
12There interposed a Fly -
13With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -
14Between the light - and me -
15And then the Windows failed - and then
16I could not see to see -
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“I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -” Introduction
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"I heard a Fly buzz - when I died" was written by the American poet Emily Dickinson in 1862, but, as with most Dickinson poems, it was not published during her lifetime. It has since become one of her most famous and one of her most ambiguous poems, talking about the moment of death from the perspective of a person who is already dead. On the one hand, this death seems to follow standard protocol: the speaker is on their deathbed and surrounded by mourners, and their will is squared away. However, the irritating figure of the fly arrives and undermines the seriousness and gravity of the occasion. Though spoken from the great beyond, the poem offers no easy answers about death, instead casting doubt on religious and social comforts.
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“I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -” Summary
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I could hear a fly buzzing around the room at the moment I died. The room felt very still, like the calm, tense air in between the gusts of a storm.
The people gathered around me had cried until they had no tears left, and everyone seemed like they were holding their breath, waiting for my final moment and anticipating the arrival of God in the room.
I had signed a will that gave away all my possessions, dividing up all the parts of my life that could be divided up. And then, suddenly, a fly interrupted the proceedings.
The fly looked blue and buzzed around the room erratically. It flew in front of the light, blocking it. Then the light from the windows faded away, and I could not see anything at all.
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“I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -” Themes
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The Mystery of Death
“I heard a Fly buzz – when I died” attempts to imagine the transition between life and death. While the poem does have questions about whether there is an afterlife, it conveys its uncertainty by focusing on the actual moment of death itself. Told from the perspective of someone who seems to have already died, the poem is mysterious and paradoxical—obviously, no one has yet been able to describe what it feels like to actually die! Dickinson tries to imagine it anyway—and her take is decidedly less sentimental than most, as the speaker’s final moments are interrupted by a buzzing fly. Perhaps this suggests the sheer mundanity of mortality—there is nothing so ordinary as a bug—or that no matter how well one prepares to face the other side, it’s impossible to be ready for something unknowable.
Though the speaker is reciting this poem after having died, what the speaker describes takes place just before this, as the speaker is on his or her deathbed. In these final moments, the room and the air are notably filled with “stillness.” This seems to anticipate the stillness of death, and suggests a sort of blurring of the border between these two states—as if the transition between life and death isn’t a sharp jump cut but rather a slow crossfade. Alternatively, maybe the other people in the room are trying to remain still on purpose in order to make the transition from life to death as seamless as possible for the speaker. This, in turn, creates a sort of tension, as everyone is done with the sad part (their “Eyes” have been “wrung dry” of tears), and is waiting with for “the King”—that is, God—to take the speaker away.
Except, instead of God arriving to aid with the passage from life to death, there is only the “uncertain, stumbling Buzz” of the fly. The timing of the fly’s arrival suggests that, surprisingly, it might be the ambassador of the underworld. Though some critics see the fly as an emissary of death—the grim reaper, perhaps—it might also just be a literal fly. In that case, it represents the absence of “the King,” undermining any certainties that the speaker might have held on to about the afterlife. Its annoying buzzing sound is darkly funny, preventing the speaker from attaining the state of spiritual contemplation or grace that would seem more fitting for the occasion. In other words, at perhaps the most spiritually significant moment in life, the speaker is distracted by a bug.
The fly, then, is a perfect symbol for spiritual doubt, its seemingly aimless airborne wandering suggesting the earthly wondering of the human mind. Indeed, part of the poem’s power comes from the fact the fly is interpretable as both significant and insignificant, symbolic and meaningless. Either way, the moment of death remains shrouded in mystery. Whatever people hope comes after life, they can’t know for sure. Ultimately, then, the poem ends on an inconclusive note, with the “failing” light of the window representing the speaker’s inability to see beyond these last living moments—despite the fact that the speaker seemingly talks from the afterlife. Death remains as unknowable as ever.
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Ritual and Meaning
Describing the speaker’s dying moments, “I heard a Fly buzz - when I died” presents a scene of ritual and ceremony. In essence, the speaker is going through the motions of what people are supposed to do when they die, and the people around the dying speaker are playing their part in this ritual too—gathering solemnly around the speaker’s death bed, crying, and dealing with the will. These last few moments are a revealing commentary on the way people conceive of life itself—but the presence of the fly casts doubts on the priorities and beliefs of human existence.
The deathbed scene the speaker describes is like a miniature of humankind’s long-established traditions and customs around death. Religion, family, and the law are all represented here. The speaker and those gathered around the speaker believe in the norms of their world. Loved ones are gathered around, suggesting the importance of human relationships, specifically of family. The crying “Eyes” suggest that life is something to value—and that its loss is worthy of mourning.
The speaker hopes for spiritual salvation from “the King,” as is the norm for the speaker's society. Thus the religious institutions of Dickinson's day, so integral to 19th century America and to Dickinson’s poetry, are also represented. And, as though to underscore the importance of earthly possession, the speaker’s final act is to "Sign[] away” his or her “Keepsakes.” This is a reference to the will that passes down all the speaker’s property and possessions—but only what “portion of me be / Assignable” (which subtly casts doubt on whether these “Keepsakes” are all that important).
Everything is set up, then, for this to be a kind of picture-perfect death—the mourners are in place and the event is unfolding according to traditions and customs of the time. But it’s then—and explicitly “then” in line 11—that the fly comes into view and earshot. It disturbs this perfect scene in a way that seems ironic, tragically comic, and incredibly well-timed.
Flies, of course, are notoriously annoying; the fly, with its meandering flight and high-pitched buzz, undermines the gravity of the situation. It functions almost like a streaker at a serious public event, farcically mocking the occasion. In turn, the presence of the fly questions whether the “keepsakes” really were important—or if maybe it was the un-assignable portion of existence that was important after all. Or perhaps even none of it was important!
Indeed, if the pre-death rituals are partly about reassuring the speaker that some part of him or her will continue to exist after death—whether in the afterlife, other peoples’ memories, or physical possessions—the fly disturbs these reassurances too. Flies are often associated with the decay of the human body. They are scavengers, happily feeding on decomposing fruit and flesh. Here, then, the fly is a reminder of what will happen to the speaker’s body once he or she is (presumably) buried. Over time, the physical features that made the speaker recognizable will waste away, leaving only bones. This is a stark reminder of the physical reality of death and seems to undermine what usually gives life meaning, whether that be possessions, beliefs, or interpersonal relationships.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -”
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Line 1
I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -
"I heard a Fly buzz - when I died" opens with an intriguing statement that draws the reader in immediately. The poem recounts a story from an unusual speaker—one who's dead! Instantly, then, the poem feels paradoxical, the speaker offering a faithful account of the moment of death after the fact (even though that is, of course, impossible).
In just one short line, then, the poem establishes its main juxtaposition—between life and death mainly, but also between mundanity and profundity. Dying, especially for this speaker (who can reasonably be understood as living/dying in the 19th century, the same as Dickinson), is meant to be a profound and serious occasion. Yet, as the poem will go on to explain, this nagging, annoying fly seems to be literally and metaphorically getting in the way. This first line places the fly front and center in the poem so that the speaker's focus on the fly in turn becomes the reader's.
The meter reflects the fly's irritating noise, with two stresses in succession varying the poem's iambic meter almost immediately:
I heard | a Fly | buzz - when | I died -
The close stresses make the line itself noisier, suggesting the fly's buzz. If instead it was perfectly iambic (such as I heard | a buzz- | ing fly), the line would be far less evocative. As it stands, the poem begins by evoking the disorder the fly creates.
The poem's juxtaposition between life and death, and between mundanity and profundity, is also developed by the first line's caesura. On one side of the characteristic Dickinsonian dash there is the fly, and on the other the speaker's death. On one side, life (in the form of the fly)—on the other, death.
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Lines 2-4
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air -
Between the Heaves of Storm -
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Lines 5-8
The Eyes around - had wrung them dry -
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset - when the King
Be witnessed - in the Room - -
Lines 9-11
I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable -
Lines 11-14
- and then it was
There interposed a Fly -
With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -
Between the light - and me - -
Lines 15-16
And then the Windows failed - and then
I could not see to see -
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“I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -” Symbols
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The Fly
The fly appears at both the beginning and the end of the poem; it seems to be the last thing that the speaker thinks about before dying and, apparently, something the speaker is still obsessing over even after death! The fly is thus undoubtedly important to the poem, but why is open to interpretation.
On the one hand, flies have a long-standing association with decay and death. In the Biblical book of Exodus, for example, flies are one of the plagues that wreak havoc on Egypt. The fly's presence is a reminder of bodily decomposition, the gruesome nature of which seems at odds with the hoped-for Christian afterlife. So while the speaker is hoping for a dignified exit, the fly's "interposition" is a reminder of the stark realities of death.
Some readings of the poem take the arrival of the fly to be more purposeful, however. That is, the fly is seen as a kind of emissary of death—perhaps the grim reaper himself. Certainly, the fly's timing is impeccable, arriving just at the moment of death (as a grim reaper would).
That said, the great power of the fly as a symbol is that, ironically, it might be utterly non-symbolic. Sometimes, that is, a fly is just a fly. To humans, flies are pretty insignificant creatures, both irritating and small. The fly's arrival, then, can also be read as a reminder of a lack of meaning. That is, its insignificance could stand in for the insignificance for human life—precisely the opposite of what the solemn deathbed scene is intended to make the speaker feel.
Finally, the fly, though small and irritating, is also very much alive. Perhaps part of the speaker's fascination with it is based on the fact that, once the speaker dies, the fly will carry on flying its "uncertain - stumbling" path around the room. The speaker, then, is confronted with the fact that the world will continue on after the speaker is gone.
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Light and Dark
In the poem’s concluding moments, the speaker describes the window light fading. This plays into a well-established idea of light as symbolic of knowledge and life, and darkness as symbolic of mystery and death. For example, the Christian God creates light in the opening of the Bible's Book of Genesis, thereby enabling the flourishing of all life on earth. Also think of the way the “Enlightenment” is the name for a period of rapid advancement in scientific knowledge. The use of light in the poem here plays on both of these meanings, suggesting the speaker’s passage into death and the mystery therein.
It’s also worth noting that it’s the fly that seems to mark this transition from light to darkness, “interpos[ing]” between the speaker and the window light. This is, of course, physically impossible, but represents the arrival of death and perhaps the closing of the speaker’s eyes. It's also interesting that people often conceive of dying as a kind of light; those who have had near-death experiences often mention a bright white light (such as a train coming through a tunnel). Here, the shift is into darkness, suggesting the speaker's uncertainty about what—if anything—comes next.
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“I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
Alliteration is used sparingly in “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died.” In the first stanza, the /st/ sound repeats three times (though this includes repetition of the word "stillness," an example of diacope). This sonically connects the "Stillness" in the room to that between gusts in a "Storm." The calm within or before a storm is a moment filled with tension, since the wind and rain will soon return; as such, this alliteration subtly underscores that the "Stillness" in the room is also filled with tension, with the knowledge that something big (the speaker's death) is about to happen.
The other meaningful example of alliteration is in lines 13 and 14.
With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -
Between the light - and me -The fly has just arrived, disrupting the solemnity of the deathbed scene. Its noise is annoying, but so too is its flight, and its erratic nature is an unwelcome reminder of the speaker’s inability to know where they themselves are going after death (if anywhere). Accordingly, these lines place three obvious /b/ sounds in close proximity, but almost at random. This seems to emulate the way the fly’s flight path looks kind of aimless, and also the irritating loudness of the fly’s buzzing sound.
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Allusion
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Juxtaposition
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Assonance
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Caesura
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Consonance
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Diacope
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Enjambment
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Paradox
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Simile
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Oxymoron
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Synecdoche
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“I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Heaves
- Wrung
- Firm
- Onset
- King
- Willed
- Keepsakes
- Assignable
- Interposed
- Blue
Heaves-
To heave means to use great physical effort to lift or move something; to haul. It can also mean to rise and fall or to churn and seethe (as turbulent ocean waves might). Used in its noun form here, it is referencing the strong winds of a storm.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -”
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Form
"I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -" has a regular form comprised of four four-line stanzas, or quatrains. This is typical of Dickinson's poetry and is closely aligned with the ballad stanza format (based on an ABCB rhyme scheme and an alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter). This form also closely relates to church hymns, which seems appropriate given that the poem is a kind of vexed meditation on what it means to die (and to have lived).
Perhaps the most significant aspect of the form is the poem's chronology. The speaker announces the first line almost casually, but it is highly contradictory. The poem is spoken from beyond the point of death, describing the moment of dying (or as close to as possible). There is, then, the moment described in the actual poem itself and the mysterious moment from which the poem is actually spoken.
The poem begins and ends with the fly, which underscores its importance. The usual social rituals of death described in lines 2 to 11 are thereby given less significance, placed in the poem in order to question their value.
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Meter
"I Heard a Fly Buzz - when I died" uses a metrical format common to many of Dickinson's poems. The basic scheme is an alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter (meaning each line has either four or three iambs, a.k.a. poetic feet with an unstressed-stressed syllable pattern). This closely aligns the poem with the ballad stanza form and church hymns. The poem is very regular in its meter for the most part. Take the final stanza:
With Blue - | uncer- | tain - stumb-| ling Buzz -
Between | the light - | and me -
And then | the Wind- | ows failed - | and then
I could | not see | to see -This regularity might be ironic, given that the poem is otherwise filled with a sense of ambiguity and uncertainty. Perhaps the steady meter reflects the speaker's attempt to make sense of the world, even as the actual content of the lines highlights the limits of human knowledge when it comes to the afterlife.
That said, the poem has what might be a variation in the very first line, with "buzz" arguably being a stressed syllable (though it can be read unstressed in order to conform with the metrical scheme):
I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -
The placement of this stress conveys the disruption of the fly, the way in which its sound is an annoying and distracting presence.
It's also worth considering the way that the characteristic Dickinson dashes affect the poem's meter. Arguably, they dictate a brief pause, thereby disrupting the poem's rhythms. This makes sense, because the poem's main subject is doubt and the unknowability of death (and the afterlife). The way the phrases unfold, then, has an awkward searching quality to it. The final stanza, as quoted above, is a strong example of this.
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Rhyme Scheme
This poem, like much of Dickinson's work, follows the ballad stanza rhyme scheme:
ABCB
All but one of the rhymes in the poem are slant rhymes. Take "Room" and "Storm" in the first stanza; these words do sound alike, but they're not full rhymes. The ballad stanza is a common one, and as such the lack of full rhymes where the reader might expect to find them perhaps suggests the poem's atmosphere of doubt and mystery—the way in which the speaker, approaching death, isn't sure what is to follow (even though they speak from beyond death!).
Only one rhyme pair in the entire poem is a perfect rhyme, and this comes at the very end. This final rhyming pair—me/see—might make the poem's ending feel steadier than everything that has come before it, like a surefooted conclusion to the speaker's thoughts. That said, this line is saying that the speaker can no longer "see" at all (i.e., the speaker is dead), and here any insight into the poem's subject, what it's like to die, abruptly cuts off. Thus even as the rhymes seem to wrap up the poem neatly, the poem remains anxious and doubtful from start to finish.
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“I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -” Speaker
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The speaker's identity is one of the most mysterious and hotly debated elements of "I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -." The poem is told in the first person, announced by the poem's very first word. But just as soon as this is established, the poem throws the reader something deeply paradoxical—the speaker explains that they are talking about the time that they "died." To speak or to write is to engage in action, and to do so requires being alive. But this speaker is also dead, and so the reader must work to understand this logical impossibility.
Readers also don't get any indication about the speaker's gender or age. This is a person with loved ones or caregivers—making up all those "Eyes" standing around the room—and who owned enough stuff to warrant creating a will. Otherwise, the speaker's identity is very vague.
Also of note is that the speaker doesn't talk about their current situation—they want to discuss their dying moments. If people could really talk to the dead, the first thing they probably would want to know is what it's like to be dead. But this speaker offers no such information, and instead seems endlessly preoccupied with the irritating presence of the fly.
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“I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -” Setting
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In a way, this poem has two settings. The first is the more obvious: the poem is a deathbed scene, probably in a 19th century Protestant home similar to Dickinson's own. The people in the poem conform to the expected social and cultural rituals of the time. These include the visible act of mourning, with the loved ones of the speaker gathered around the death bed; the expectation of spiritual assistance from God; and the legal organization of the dying person's property. The setting is, in its morbid way, perfect, like a well-tuned example of how someone ought to die. But of course, this is interrupted by the presence of the fly, whose erratic flight and annoying noise seems to question the meaning of these social and cultural rituals.
The other setting is far more mysterious. The speaker talks in the past tense, implying that their vantage point is from somewhere beyond the moment described. This means that the speaker is apparently speaking/writing from the afterlife—but they offer no information about this at all. Accordingly, this second setting reaffirms the poem's main point—that dying, death, and what comes after (if anything) are inherently beyond human comprehension.
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Literary and Historical Context of “I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -”
Literary Context
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) published almost nothing during her lifetime, and after 1865 she rarely even left her family home in Amherst, Massachusetts. But from within this circumscribed world, she explored the heights and depths of human experience through her groundbreaking, world-changing poetry.
While Dickinson wasn't too publicly involved in the literary world of her time, she was still part of a swell of 19th-century American innovation. Her contemporary Walt Whitman (who became as famous as Dickinson was obscure) was similarly developing an unprecedented and unique poetic voice, and the Transcendentalists (like Emerson and Thoreau) shared her deep belief in the spiritual power of nature. Dickinson herself was inspired by English writers like William Wordsworth and Charlotte Brontë, whose works similarly found paths through the everyday world into the sublime, terrifying, and astonishing.
Death was a frequent theme for Dickinson; she wrote about it from every conceivable perspective, from that of a heartbroken mourner to that of the deceased. Some of her most famous poems on the subject include "Because I could not stop for Death," "I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain," "As imperceptibly as grief," and "Death is the supple suitor."
Dickinson also went to a religious school as a child and continued to be preoccupied with questions about faith and the meaning of existence throughout her life. Church literature, then, was also a major influence on Dickinson, and her poems often employ a meter and diction similar to that found in hymns.
Historical Context
Dickinson's most active writing years coincided with one of the most tumultuous times in American history: the Civil War (1861 to 1865). However, Dickinson rarely addressed the political world directly in her poetry, preferring either to write about her immediate surroundings or to take a much wider philosophical perspective.
Dickinson also grew up in a religious community and came of age during the religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening. Dickinson herself was even swept up by this religious movement for a time. Though she ultimately rejected organized religion, her poems remain preoccupied with theological concerns. Many express wonder about the afterlife, speculating on what it's like to meet God—if that's what happens when people die (something Dickinson wasn't sure about).
By the 1860s, Dickinson had also already experienced the deaths of several relatives and friends. Her cousin Sophia Holland and friend Benjamin Franklin Newton had both died young, and their losses affected her deeply.
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More “I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -” Resources
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External Resources
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Dickinson's Meter — A valuable discussion of Emily Dickinson's use of meter.
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In Emily's Words — An image of the only known draft of the poem in Dickinson's own handwriting.
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The Poem Animated — A spooky animation of the poem.
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More From Dickinson — A link to numerous other Emily Dickinson poems.
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The Dickinson Museum — The Emily Dickinson Museum, situated in the poet's old house, has lots of resources for students.
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On Playing Emily — A clip in which actor Cynthia Nixon discusses playing Emily Dickinson on screen in "A Quiet Passion."
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In Our Time podcast — Experts talk about Emily Dickinson's life and work on the BBC's In Our Time podcast/radio show.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Emily Dickinson
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