I Heard a Fly Buzz when I Died

Emily Dickinson · 1890

Catalog grade guidance: 9–12 — Short lyric; Todd/Higginson text of the three early series.

18 content lines · 94 words · Est. recitation about 58 sec (approx.)

Public-domain text for reading and recitation practice. Source: Project Gutenberg eBook #12242, Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete.Estimated time uses ~120 words/minute plus short pauses—not a contest rule.

XLVI.

DYING.

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.