"Those cattle smaller than a Bee" By Emily Dickinson [Analysis]

Those cattle smaller than a Bee[1] That herd upon the eye [2] Whose tillage is the passing Crumb [3] Those Cattle are the Fly [4] Of Barns for Winter blameless [5] Extemporaneous stalls[6] They found to our objection [7] On eligible walls [8] Reserving the presumption[9] To suddenly descend[10] And gallop on the Furniture [11] Or odiouser offend [12] Of their peculiar calling[13] Unqualified to judge[14] To Nature we remand them[15] To justify or scourge [16]
Poem 1388 [F1393] "Those Cattle smaller than a Bee" Analysis by David Preest [Poem]

Richard Sewall deftly sums up this poem as being 'a jeu d'esprit whose pompous Latinisms and legalisms cavort with pure Saxon to present the case (which in mock helplessness she finally abandons to Nature) against the common fly.' In line 5 'ignorant' is a variant reading for 'blameless.' At then end of line 12 we could supply 'by getting in our soup or eye.' Emily might have liked Bartok's piano piece 'The Diary of a Fly' (Mikrokosmos vol.6:3).
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