Emily Dickinson
I heard a Fly buzz—when I died —
I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air—
The first stanza locates this poem in the eye of a storm. While the subject of death raises many tumultuous emotions, Dickinson sets her lyric poem in a brief moment of quiet reflection.Between the Heaves of Storm—
The Eyes around—had wrung them dry—
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset—when the King
This poem, like many others Dickinson wrote, is in common meter. The form uses iambic rhythm and alternates between four-beat (tetrameter) and three-beat (trimeter) lines. For Dickinson, one important source of this rhythm was the hymns she heard at her family’s Congregational Church.Be witnessed—in the Room—
I willed my Keepsakes—Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable—and then it was
Dickinson artfully mutes this strong rhythm with enjambed phrases like “Signed away / What portion of me be / Assignable.” The syntax draws the reader on to the next line, even as the line break creates a slight pause.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—
Emily Dickinson. "Because I could not stop for Death—" and "I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—." Reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Copyright © 1951, 1955 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © renewed 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1914, 1918, 1919, 1924, 1929, 1930, 1932, 1935, 1937, 1942 by Martha Dickinson Bianchi. Copyright © 1952, 1957, 1958, 1963, 1965 by Mary L. Hampson.