R. Burns - To a Mouse / To a Louse

Robert Burns' "To a Mouse" (1785) is a deeply poetic monologue of a young man who accidently overturns the soil of a mouse's nest. Emotionally surrendering to the pitiful scene, Burns' narrator succumbs to the weight of his past failures and fears for the future and expresses himself in a profoundly poignant soliloquy. One of the lines, now a famous quote, "The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, / gang aft agley" (38-39), is perhaps one of the most profound quotes of Scottish, and indirectly, European and American literature. Burns' poem, in its intimate solidarity with all men, touches the reader in ways few poetic works ever really can. To understand what Burns' "To a Mouse" genuinely means to a reader is to know their darkest, innermost secrets and most remorseful memories of regret. It is this intimacy that gives Burns' "To a Mouse" its intensity.Scottish writer, Robert Burns (1759 - 1796), was an accomplished and very well known Scottish poet whose works went well beyond the borders of Scotland. Often writing in English as well as a light Scot-English dialect, his writing was readily accessible to readerships throughout Europe and North America. "To a Mouse," would be an example of one of Burns' 'Scot-English' works, with its deep, predominantly English verse accented with some Scottish vocabulary and culture-typical idioms. Often, when an English speaker is reading Burns, they must imagine a smooth rhythmic Scottish accent, and try to avoid toiling over any literal meanings of English words spelled in Scottish dialect. Burns must be 'felt'; allowing the words to flow uninterrupted so that the greater theme can more freely reveal itself. In the case of Burns' "To a Mouse," the message is a theme that is absolutely worth the relationship.
The first six stanzas of Burns' "To a Mouse" is a heart felt description and apology to a little 'mousie' who has had her nest destroyed by the narrator who was plowing his field. With all her work destroyed by the blade of the farmer's plow, the little mouse's fate of dying in the harsh December weather is assured. The narrator tries to tell the terrified little mouse that he had meant her no harm and, that though she stole the odd piece of corn, he never actually held any malice towards her for doing so. He goes on to say that in many ways he was glad to share for the sake of the little creature, and felt that man's progress has already broken too many of God's natural bonds. These bonds are the connections that they as fellow mortal beings shared against the suffering and cruel interventions of chance and fate on Earth.
It is here, as Burn's narrator pours his heart out to this pitiful little 'mousie,' that the narrator seems to be undone by what has happened to her. In the lines "The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, / Gang aft agley, / An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, / For promis'd joy!" (38-41), he tries to explain that no matter how well thought out or how well intentioned our plans may be, even the best of them can be ruined by a simple turn of luck; the mouse's nest, a careful and diligent construction of a summer's labor, was just as easily destroyed as any house or farm ever built by man. For our labors, our most earnest hopes, Burn's narrator mourns and describes their returns of "grief an' pain, / For promised joy!" (40-41).It's this turn in the course of the poem's theme after the seventh stanza, Burns' full intentions coming to light, that the narrator reveals why he is talking to this frightful mouse in such a pathetic manner. He see's in the mouse a fellow victim of the hand of fate, and cannot but feel empathy for her loss. The narrator speaks as if he himself has recently lost a dream that he too saw hewn in half by some uncontrollable force of destiny. As he talks to the mouse, it seems fresh in his mind as the describes the past as a stinging recollection of failures; "Still, thou art blest, compar'd wi' me! / The present only toucheth the: / But Ouch! I backward cast my e'e, / On prospect drear! / An' forward, though' I canna see, / I guess and fear!" (Line 42-47). As many who have suffered failure and loss, Burns' narrator, or perhaps Burns himself, expresses jealousy for the mouse's ability to live perpetually in the present without a past to rush painfully back into her mind whenever she remembers. Burns' narrator, in this distant forlorn monologue, describes how he can only guess what the future may hold, and fears for its uncertain outcome. It seems that Burns' narrator has been wrestling with this repressed pain and worry for some time, and now, only with the emotional catalyst of the mouse's disaster is he forced face them. He somehow feels obligated to apologize to a little creature that has no understanding of what he's trying to say, and whose death is all but assured thanks to his ignorant action. Yet, in some metaphysical metaphor, Burns manages to turn the mouse into a tiny helpless symbol of ourselves, terrified at a world that could so easily destroy us at any moment, and make us wonder if God feels the same way we do when he stands over disaster.

T. Gray - Elegy written in a country churchyard

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,

And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower

The moping owl does to the moon complain

Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,

Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,

Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,

The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,

Or busy housewife ply her evening care:

No children run to lisp their sire's return,

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share,

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;

How jocund did they drive their team afield!

How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;

Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile

The short and simple annals of the Poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,

Awaits alike th' inevitable hour:-

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

[...]

The Epitaph

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth

A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.

Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,

And Melacholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,

Heaven did a recompense as largely send:

He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,

He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode

(There they alike in trembling hope repose),

The bosom of his Father and his God.

A- Tennyson - Ulysses; R. Browning - My Last Duchess

W. Wordsworth - Daffodils

Robinson Crusoe - Colonialism and Imperialism

In order to keep expanding, capitalism requires a cheap source of raw materials and markets for finished products. Colonies serve both functions for the mother country. So though capitalism and colonialism are not identical, they are closely associated. In the eighteenth and the nineteenth century, colonialism and imperialism were generally synonymous; today the terms are still often interchanged, though they are not truly identical. In colonialism, one nation controls the territory, the economy, and the political structure of another country; in imperialism, one nation extends its empire or its dominion over another nation. Thus, colonialism is one form that imperialism may take in extending its domination of other lands; today, however, imperialism is more likely to consist of a wealthy, powerful nation coercing or threatening weak or poor nations to control them politically and/or economically.
Crusoe acts as a colonizer in assuming complete dominion over the island and any people he encounters. The land and all its products belong to him. Several times he notes the abundance of trees suitable for making masts (the British navy and merchant ships looked to the American colonies to meet their need for trees to make masts). Crusoe's actions as an individual duplicate those of nations in claiming land for colonies. When Crusoe leaves the island, he leaves behind English and Spanish sailors as colonists. An absence of years does not diminish his ownership. The chapter which narrates his return to the island is titled "I Revisit My Island" (italics added for emphasis). He visits "my" colony on the island (298) and gives some land to the Europeans, keeping title to the whole island for himself. In return, they agree not to leave the island (do they have any choice, since Crusoe has the only boat?).
As an embryo imperialist, Crusoe sees himself as king and others as his subjects, including his pets. He creates, not a democracy, not a republic, but a kingdom He imposes his will on others, most obviously Friday, but also on the worst of the English mutineers, whom he forces into staying on the island. For James Joyce, Robinson Crusoe is "prophetic," forecasting English imperialism:
The true symbol of British conquest is Robinson Crusoe, who, cast away on a desert island, in his pocket a knife and a pipe, becomes an architect, a carpenter, a knife grinder, an astronomer, a baker, a shipwright, a potter, a saddler, a farmer, a tailor, an umbrella-maker, and a clergyman. He is the true prototype of the British colonist, as Friday (the trusty slave who arrives on an unlucky day) is the symbol of the subject races. The whole Anglo-Saxon spirit is in Crusoe: the manly independence; the unconscious cruelty; the persistence; the slow yet efficient intelligence; the sexual apathy; the practical, well-balanced religiousness; the calculating taciturnity.
Crusoe as imperialist-conqueror is not a twentieth century invention, as Jules Fesquet's 1877 illustration of a heroic Crusoe demonstrates. Fesquet presents Crusoe as Hercules with a nude muscular body, Hercules's trademark lion's skin, and a sword. His sovereign rule is suggested by the orb he holds and the abject submission of the native. This picture asserts European domination over native populations, whose inferiority is expressed not only in the caannibal's submissive posture but in a somewhat less muscular body. The limitlessness of Crusoe's/the white man's power is suggested by the absence of a frame around the original illustration. An aside: do you think the prone figure is Friday?