Lyric Poem · Death & Loss
The Fly
Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.
“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).
Want the rules this form is measured against? Read what makes a lyric poem, or run your own draft through the form checker to see the same measurements on your lines. How we measure · Report a mistake
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.