Sydney Owenson's (Lady Morgan's) "The Musical Fly and William Blake's "The Fly"

                

 
Photos above:

 Left: Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan) with harp, compliments of NY Public Library

Right: the-fly-shapiro.webp from Google Images

An excerpt from a paper presented at Association for Franco-Irish Studies, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, Ireland: 

In Sydney Owenson's (Lady Morgan's) poetic collection, Lay of an Irish Harp,  her chapter entitled, “The Musical Fly,” renders a quote in French: “De pouvoir sans nous ennuyer Eterniser une bagatelle,” which translated into English generally states, “We cannot perpetuate a trifle annoyance.” Her poetic rendition continues with the tale of a fly’s encounter with the silent strings of a harp and an allusion to William Blake’s “The Fly” (See Blake's poem below.)

In the third stanza, she writes: 

Not seem’d unconscious of the charm
That lurk’d in every silent string
For oft the little vagrant swept

               O’er every chord his lucid wing. 

A fly not only is an insect that displays independence, but the word, fly, is both transitive and intransitive, with multiple meanings, all of which are related to transcendence. This fly, then, could be representative of independence. While Blake’s fly has an inevitable brush with death, “For I dance/And drink and sing, /Till some blind hand/Shall brush my wing,” Owenson’s fly, with a touch of its lucid wing, flirts with the silent strings of the Irish harp, a symbol of Ireland, and manages to create a resonance with the origins of the harp’s music. 

Both writers use a melodic format with metaphoric representations of the human aspiration for independence and the complexity that occurs when this spirit interacts with annoying governmental and societal dictates. Both poets elucidate for their audiences the dire consequences associated with submission to an overt power. 

Whereas Blake’s fly dances until it receives its fatal blow, Owenson’s fly dances to silent strings. Hers lives in a paradox that illustrates her desire to convince those in the British government, who could create the true music to allow their constituents to experience a reality based on tolerance, but choose instead to manage their constituents like that of the insect-vagrant, whose truth consists of momentary felicity. 

Owenson’s careful choice of lexicon in her poetic representation of independence reveals the antagonism that echoes throughout Irish history, like the strings of her harp, often resonating in a cultural vacuum of silence. 

The Fly 

by 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.