"blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz..."See in text(Text of the Poem)
Dickinson uses alliteration, or the repetition of consonant sounds, in lines thirteen and fourteen. By repeating the sound of the consonant “b” in “blue,” “buzz,” and “between,” the speaker conveys the sensory experience of hearing the fly buzz as her eyesight begins to fail. Further, the repetition of a voiced consonant like “b” is particularly disruptive to the flow of the final stanza in combination with the punctuation that interrupts and ends both lines.
"There interposed a fly,..."See in text(Text of the Poem)
The verb “to interpose” means to get in the way of or to place something in between things or people. Here, the fly interrupts this grave moment by disrupting the seriousness of the occasion with its buzzing. Its sudden presence also disrupts the momentous climax that the reader has been primed to expect: a fly appears in place of “the king.” Dickinson may also suggest that the fly itself is the king, which is a possible allusion to Beelzebub, a demon from Milton’s Paradise Lost that ranks next to Satan and has been adopted into Christian theology and popularized as the Lord of the Flies.
The noun “keepsakes” refers to the speaker’s valuables, which have been given to loved ones to remember the speaker by. These items are traditionally assigned to specific people in a person’s will, a signed legal document that distributes a person’s belongings after death. Dickinson’s word choice indicates that these items are sentimental, rather than monetarily valuable.
