Lyric Poem · Death & Loss

The Fly

by William Blake

Little Fly,

Thy summer's play

My thoughtless hand

Has brushed away.

Am not I

A fly like thee?

Or art not thou

A man like me?

For I dance

And drink, and sing,

Till some blind hand

Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life

And strength and breath

And the want

Of thought is death;

Then am I

A happy fly,

If I live,

Or if I die.

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“The Fly” by William Blake — quilloak.com/poems/the-fly

Quick facts

Poem: The Fly
Poet: William Blake
Length: 20 lines
Form: Lyric Poem
Themes: Death & Loss, Summer, Nature

Craft notes

How this poem works

Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.

Shape: 20 lines · 5 quatrains
End rhyme: ABCB in 80% of the stanzas — ballad rhyme — only lines 2 and 4 chime. The remaining stanzas vary, often through slant rhyme.
Line length: Mostly 4-syllable lines (dimeter length).

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Text, source & rights

A traceable edition

Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.

Author record: William Blake1757–1827
Source record: PoetryDBThe Fly by william-blake, PoetryDB transcription
Display decision: Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
Publication record: Not recorded in the imported source
Text fingerprint: SHA-256 6c1473ec3bbb63d2…
Editorial handling: Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.

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Lyric Poem Death & Loss Summer Nature

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