To a Mouse

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1786

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

“To a Mouse” uses a stanza form that is largely unique to Scottish poetry. The stanzas are sestets, containing six lines each, and follow an AAABAB rhyme scheme. The A-rhyming lines follow iambic tetrameter, which means they consist of four metrical feet (tetrameter) of two syllables which are unstressed on the first beat and stressed on the second (iambs). The B-rhyming lines follow iambic dimeter, which means they consist of two metrical feet (dimeter) and follow the same stress pattern as the A-rhyming lines. The poem’s meter deviates slightly. The entire first stanza, for instance, adds an extra unstressed syllable at the end of its lines. Indented lines signify B end rhymes, as is standard in Burns’s era.

This stanza form is sometimes called the “Burns stanza” for Burns’s extensive use of the form. They are more correctly known as standard Habbie stanzas, and are named after the Robert Sempill poem, “The Life and Death of Habbie Simson,” which popularized the form. Though the form was originally used for laments, Burns and his contemporaries often used it for comedic verse. Typically, each standard Habbie will denote a change in the speaker’s focus. In “To a Mouse,” Burns follows this convention. For instance, the speaker shifts from a discussion of “Man’s dominion” and his self-identification with the mouse in the second stanza before moving to the mouse’s need to eat in the third. This tendency is supported by the way the two lines of iambic dimeter near the end of a standard Habbie can give each stanza a feeling of resolution.

Dialect

Burns’s unique combination of English and Scots dialect is immediately recognizable in “To a Mouse.” Though Scots and English are quite close in their spelling and pronunciation, they are best understood as distinct languages with distinct uses. Burns uses Scots to various ends within the poem. The longer analysis of the poem focuses largely on how Scots can be read as shorthand for authenticity and emotional intensity. The thickness of the Scots accent and dialect in the work is directly correlated with the speaker’s heightened emotion. English, by contrast, particularly the technical English in the second stanza, denotes emotional detachment and logical precision.

The use of Scots also reinforces the poem’s spontaneity. Scots, though used in poetry at least since the 17th century, was perceived as a vulgar, rather than literary, tongue. Scots was primarily spoken by the lower classes, and Scots songs were commonly perceived to be unlearned works by naive poets—particularly by the dominant English upper classes. In this way, Scots works to affirm the speaker’s working-class, national identity. Burns plays off these common Scots stereotypes in order to deepen the speaker’s unassuming authenticity. Though Burns himself is a serious poet, his speaker’s familiar, common dialect helps to remove the pretensions of serious verse.

Assonance

Scots brings an interesting collection of vowel sounds and unique rhymes that add to the speaker’s self-identification and to the poem’s musicality. Much of the Scots verse that came before Burns took the form of songs meant to be put to music. Burns picks up on this tradition through his use of assonance (or repeated, sympathetic vowel sounds) that reinforce Scot’s musical qualities.

As with the poet’s intense emotions, assonance in “To a Mouse” appears most readily when the speaker communicates in Scots. The poem’s opening line, for instance, repeats a long e sound in "Wee," "sleeket," "beastie.” This sound is also the stanza’s A rhyme sound and is used to end lines 1, 2, 3, and 5. The standard Habbie with its AAABAB rhyme scheme lends itself particularly well to this kind of end-line assonance, and Burns’s use of feminine line-endings (endings that add an additional unstressed syllable) takes advantage of that formal quality.