This I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died summary begins with the surprise in the first line. Emily Dickinson’s speaker, already dead, describes the moment of her death. Her family waits in silence for something grand, the arrival of “the king,” but what actually comes between her and the light is an ordinary housefly. Then her sight fails. The poem turns a solemn deathbed into an unsettling, almost comic scene. Read the full text of I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died on Poetry Catalog.
I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died Summary
Stanza 1. The speaker says she heard a fly buzz when she died. The room was very still, like the quiet air “Between the heaves of storm,” the calm between gusts.
Stanza 2. The mourners around the bed have cried until their eyes are dry. They hold their breath, waiting for “that last onset,” when “the king” will be “witnessed in his power.” They expect the moment of death to reveal something majestic, perhaps God or Death himself.
Stanza 3. The speaker has made her will, signing away her “keepsakes” and whatever part of her could be legally given away. “And then,” she says, “There interposed a fly.”
Stanza 4. The fly, with its “blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,” comes “Between the light and me.” Then “the windows failed,” and she “could not see to see.” The poem ends with her death.
Key Facts
- Poet: Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
- Published: after her death, in the 1890s
- Form: four quatrains in a hymn-like meter
- Speaker: a woman describing her own death, from after it
- Setting: a deathbed, surrounded by mourners
- Tone: calm, precise and quietly ironic
Themes
Death and expectation. Everyone in the room expects a great revelation, “the king.” What arrives is a fly. The poem questions whether death brings any grand meaning at all.
The ordinary and the sacred. A buzzing fly is the smallest, most common thing in a summer room. Placing it at the center of the most solemn moment of a life makes the moment strange and human.
Uncertainty about the afterlife. The poem ends in darkness, not in heaven. The speaker sees no vision. Dickinson leaves open what comes after.
Letting go. The speaker has given away her possessions and prepared herself. The will and keepsakes show the practical side of dying, alongside its spiritual side.
Key Lines Explained
I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The poem opens with a startling line. The speaker is dead, and the first thing she remembers is a trivial sound. The calm tone makes it even stranger.
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.
The mourners wait for “the king.” This may mean God, Christ or Death. They expect a royal arrival. The poem’s irony is that the visitor is a fly.
I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable,
She has made a will. The phrase “What portion of me I / Could make assignable” suggests that only part of her can be given away; the rest, perhaps the soul, cannot.
With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
“Blue” describes a sound, mixing the senses (synesthesia). The fly literally blocks the light, which also suggests it blocks any spiritual vision.
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.
“Windows” means her eyes. “I could not see to see” is a brilliant, simple line: she has lost the sight that would let her see, in every sense.
Form, Meter and Rhyme
The poem uses four quatrains in a version of common meter, lines alternating four beats and three beats, as in hymns. The rhymes fall on lines 2 and 4. Most are full rhymes, “form” and “storm,” “I” and “fly,” “me” and “see,” but stanza 2 pairs “sure” with “power,” a slant rhyme that sounds slightly off, just as the mourners’ expectations are about to go wrong. The full rhyme of “me” and “see” gives the ending a hard sense of closure.
The dashes in Dickinson’s manuscripts were changed to commas and semicolons in the early printing that appears on our page, but the dash before “and then” in stanza 3 still marks the moment the fly interrupts.
FAQ
What is the main message of I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died?
That death may not bring the grand revelation people expect. The final moment is interrupted by something ordinary, and what follows is uncertain.
What does the fly symbolize?
The ordinary physical world, decay, or the failure of any heavenly vision. Its presence keeps death human and unglamorous.
Who is “the king” in the poem?
Probably God or Death. The mourners expect a powerful presence to appear at the moment of death.
What does “I could not see to see” mean?
Her eyes stopped working, so she could no longer see anything, including any spiritual truth she might have hoped to glimpse.