To a Mouse: Key Poetic Devices

Aphorism

An aphorism (AF-uh-ri-zuhm) is a pithy statement that expresses a general truth. Many aphorisms are so commonplace that they become idiomatic parts of everyday speech. For instance, consider the aphorism, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” This saying is so ordinary it might even be clichéd. Yet a saying needn’t be well-known to count as an aphorism. In fact, any pithy statement of a general truth or opinion may have an aphoristic quality. In “To a Mouse,” Burns uses aphorism to powerful effect in the penultimate stanza. In lines 39–42, the speaker summarizes the nature of the plight he shares with the mouse whose nest he’s accidentally destroyed:

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!

Perhaps not surprisingly, given their aphoristic quality, these lines are partly responsible for the enduring fame of Burns’s poem. Indeed, the power of these lines has proven so enduring that, even today, native English speakers can conjure the full meaning of the aphorism through abbreviation. That is, we can simply say, “The best laid schemes of mice and men,” and others will understand our meaning that said schemes often go awry. The aphoristic quality of these lines suits the poem’s speaker, who, as a farmer, is a likely candidate for dispensing such earthy wisdom.

Allusion

An allusion (uh-LOO-zhun) is a passing reference to a literary or historical person, place, or event, usually made without explicit identification. Considering that “To a Mouse” is a vernacular verse with a rustic and presumably uneducated speaker, it may come as a surprise to learn that Burns employs such a refined literary tactic. Yet he does—and brilliantly too, The central allusion in the poem appears in lines 7–12, where the speaker apologizes to the mouse:

I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An’ fellow-mortal!

The key phrase here is “Nature’s social union,” which refers to a passage in the English poet Alexander Pope’s verse epic of 1733, Essay on Man. Epistle III of that work features a personified Nature that speaks directly to “man.” Nature instructs him to avoid relying on reason and instead learn the art of living from other creatures, who can teach him about “all forms of social union.” This is precisely what the speaker of “To a Mouse” references when he laments how “Man’s dominion / Has broken Nature’s social union.” The speaker implies that “Man” has failed to heed the advice Nature gave in Pope’s poem. As such, the mouse’s fear of its “earth-born companion“—that is, the speaker—is justified.

Antithesis

Antithesis (an-TIH-thuh-siss) is a rhetorical strategy in which a contrast is made using a parallel syntactic structure. The most important example of antithesis in “To a Mouse” occurs in the poem’s final stanza, where the speaker contrasts his own plight with that of the mouse. Yet intriguingly, it isn’t directly through antithesis that the speaker compares himself to the mouse. Instead, the antithesis arises in the speaker’s consideration of what’s unique about his own plight in lines 43–48:

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

The instance of antithesis appears in the final four lines of this quote, where the speaker explicitly contrasts a “backward” glance to the past with the “forward” gaze into the future. What’s interesting here is that, despite the antithesis of past and future, the speaker sees the same thing in both directions. That is, both past and future are filled with dreary “prospects.” Significantly, prospects can mean both a view of something that already exists and the likelihood of a possible event taking place. The speaker’s plight stems from the fact that both past and future prospects are dreary. This fact enables the secondary contrast, in which the speaker asserts that, unlike him, the mouse need only consider the present moment.

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