The Fly - William Blake

The Fly

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.

        William Blake was an English poet, painter and print maker. He was largely unrecognized during his life time. He is now considered in the history of poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. he was not that much famous but he has done some memorable works in the literature.

      

      "The Fly" is a poem written by the English poet William Blake. It was published as part of his collection 'Songs of Experience' in 1794. In this poem he talks about an insect's life comparing with his self. He usually connects things to ordinary man, and he said in poem that he want to be free like fly. In this poem fly is a symbol of short but happy life. In which whatever he do is interesting and full of fun.

       

Analysis:

        With a simple everyday experience, in the first stanza there is a picture of human versus nature. There was a fly and a human being brushes away an ordinary fly, and brushes it away with a "thoughtless hand" this represents that a person didn’t give a second thought. But the poetry is all about finding large meaning in small moments and a hand of human being which kills a little fly without knowing that he doesn’t have any right to end anybody's life without or with any purpose.

 In the second stanza, human thinks about the fly and says,

Am not I

A fly like thee?

        He asks a question that 'Is human being really any more important than fly?'. As soon as he discovers a seriousness of this act, he starts comparing himself with the fly and its mortality.

       Stanza three elaborates on the theme of stanza two. All human beings are mortal, we are all going to die someday. So we are all just going about our lives dancing, drinking, singing and many more until some unknown hand strikes us down.

       Stanza four and five offer one possible reason for believing that a human life is more important than a fly's life we are capable of thinking about the meaning of our lives. That is what separate us from flies and another unthinking creature.after that the life and death do not matter, what matter is how much a person has lived during life and before death.

        'The Fly' by William Blake has a very loose structure and uses a tetrameter rhyme scheme. The poet uses imagery, when human killed a fly by taking a place of God, on the other side there is a comparison of human with fly, which represents the place of human for the insects like fly (God) and the place of human in universe (Fly). Rhyming scheme is a, b, c, b. And the stanzas are short and symbolized.