Analysis of Dying (I heard a fly buzz when I died)
Emily Dickinson 1830 (Amherst) – 1886 (Amherst)
I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.
I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable, -- and then
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.
Scheme | XAXABXXXXBCB XDCD |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11011111 010111 11010001 010111 01011111 0101001 1111101 1100110 1111101 110111 11101 1101 110101001 010101 01010101 111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 528 |
Words | 95 |
Sentences | 4 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 12, 4 |
Lines Amount | 16 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 193 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 47 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 05, 2023
- 28 sec read
- 193 Views
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"Dying (I heard a fly buzz when I died)" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/11604/dying-%28i-heard-a-fly-buzz-when-i-died%29>.
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