The Literary Fly Fisher

My grandfather’s copy of The Poetical Works of Robert Burns

Tonight, as my wife and I put my daughter to bed, I read and spoke a bit about Robert Burns. To my ten-year-old child’s credit, she indulged me as I explained the significance of Burns’ use of the Scots language, his condemnation of the pretenses shown by the wealthy in church, and so on. She may have a limited interest in such matters at her age, but she seems to appreciate a poet who apologizes to a mouse, after disturbing its home. And I think she appreciates a poet who can admire how that mouse can get right to building a new home; unlike humans, according to this bard, the mouse will not become so obsessed with this or other wrongs nor so worried about obstacles not yet encountered that it cannot carry on. I hope my daughter will learn from Burns, who wrote “To a Mouse, on Turning her up in her Nest with the Plough” in November of 1785. For she will experience wrongs, and she will encounter obstacles. But I trust she will carry on, like the mouse.

Following are the final stanzas of Burns’ famous poem.

But Mousie, though art no they lane,
In proving foresight may be vane:
The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang oft a-gley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an” pain,
For promis’d joy.

But thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only troucheth thee:
But, Och! I backward cast my e’e
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, though I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!

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