It is said that Robert Burns wrote “To a Mouse” after
finding a mouse and its nest in ruins. In the first seven stanzas, the speaker
apologizes to the mouse for ruining its life with his plough and for the way
human treats other creatures. He sees not with the view of “man’s dominion” (7)
but treats the mouse as a “fellow mortal” (12). He also confesses for smashing
the mouse’s shelter with his “cruel coulter” and feels terrible that it now has
to “thole the winter’s sleety dribble / An’ cranreuch cauld!” (35-36) because
he accidentally made it homeless.
In the last stanza, the speaker sighs that even with all the
problems a mouse could have that he has just addressed and apologized for, it
is still better off than the speaker himself. He envies that with “The present
only toucheth thee” (20), the mouse doesn’t have to be restrained by the past
or to be afraid of the future like he does. However the fact that he thinks the
mouse only has the present to worry about reflects his underlying opinion of
mouse being an inferior species of animal instead of an “earthborn companion” (11)
of human. If the mouse could hear Burns or actually answer him, it must have
not been very pleased that he automatically assumes that his own problems and
fears are more important and of a greater scale than that of the mouse’s.
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