In “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died -,” Emily Dickinson combines an almost startling realism with some romantic elements. Let's look at a couple examples of each.

First, the fly's buzzing is very much a realistic element. We can picture the stillness in the room around the dying speaker's bed, and then there is a buzz of a stray insect. This certainly could happen in the real world. Other realistic elements include the gathering of mourners and the willing away of possessions.

Of course, there are plenty of romantic elements in this poem, too, elements that bring the scene up to new heights of symbolism and imagination. Notice the simile that the poet uses to describe the stillness in the first stanza. Look, too, at the image of the “Onset” in the second stanza and the allusion to the King. The fourth stanza describes the speaker's sight failing as the fly buzzes. Of course, the greatest romantic element of all may be that the speaker has already died but is still composing a poem.