Robert Burns' "To a Mouse"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2023

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Robert or "Rabbie" Burns (born 25 January 1759, died 21 July 1796) hailed from Alloway, Scotland. Like his father, Burns was a tenant farmer. However, toward the end of his life he became an excise collector in Dumfries, where he died in 1796; throughout his life he was also a practicing poet. His poetry recorded and celebrated aspects of farm life, regional experience, traditional culture, class culture and distinctions, and religious practice. He is considered the national poet of Scotland. Although he did not set out to achieve that designation, he clearly and repeatedly expressed his wish to be called a Scots bard, to extol his native land in poetry and song.

-bio via Poetry Foundation

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Tuesday, December 5th, 2023.
0:10.3	Today's poem is by Robert Burns, the National Poet of Scotland, and it's called To a Mouse.
0:20.5	Odds are, if you know any Robert Burns poems, there are probably three you're likely to be familiar with, and this is one of them.
0:32.1	I will read it once, offer a few comments, and then, if I'm feeling generous, read it again as authentically as possible.
0:44.6	Here is To a Mouse. The epigraph reads, On Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plow, November 1785.
0:56.1	We sleek at Cowan Timrous Beasty.
0:59.6	Oh, what a panics in thy breesty.
1:02.1	Thou needn astardawaisa hasty with bicker and braddle.
1:06.6	I would belayth to run and chase thee with murder and paddle.
1:10.9	I'm truly sorry, man's dominion has broken nature's social union and justifies that ill
1:16.9	opinion which makes thee startle at me thy poor earth-born companion and fellow mortal.
1:24.5	I doubt not wiles, but thou may thieve, what then, poor beastie, thou man leave?
1:30.7	A diamond-acre in a threave, So small request, I'll get a blessing with the lave, and ne'er miss it.
1:37.6	Thy wee bit housey too in ruin. It's silly, as the winds are strewn, and nothing now to beg anewan, O foggage green.
1:48.4	And bleak December's winds ensuing bates snell and keen. Thou saw the fields laid bare in waste,
1:56.5	in weary winter come and faced, and cozy here beneath the blast thou thought to dwell till crash the cruel
2:04.2	colter passed out through thy cell. That wee, but he believes in stibble has cost thee money a weary nibble.
2:14.0	Now thou'st turned out for all thy trouble, but house sore hailed to thole the winter's sleety dribble,
2:21.5	And cranroot called.
2:24.6	But, Mousie, thou art no thai lane.
2:28.4	Improving foresight may be vain, The best-laid schemes of mice and men gang aft aglai, when leas nothing but grief and pain for
2:40.1	promised joy.
	...

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