Speaker
This poem consists entirely of a monologue delivered by a single speaker—a farmer, evidently in Scotland based on his dialect, who has upset a mouse's nest as he plows his fields. He is evidently gentle and thoughtful, carefully considering the fears of the creature and apologizing to it, not only for his own accidental actions, but for those of humanity as a whole. His own concerns reflect common social concerns of Robert Burns's Romantic contemporaries, including the role of humans in the natural world and the protection of the weak or innocent. At the poem's end, the speaker also hints that he is haunted by more personal concerns, including both regrets from the past and concerns about the future. But he overwhelmingly focuses on the state of the mouse, avoiding explicit discussion of his own circumstances.
The Mouse
The mouse is the focus of this poem, but its role is primarily to reflect the fears, feelings, and qualities of the farmer. Its actions are unsurprising and instinctive—it builds a nest and reacts with fear when the nest is destroyed. However, from the farmer's perspective, these instinctive actions become poignant and symbolically rich. The mouse becomes, in the eyes of the speaker, an embodiment of vulnerability, simplicity, and innocence. At the same time, the farmer attributes a certain happy ignorance to it, noting that it lives fully in the present, so that even its momentary discontents are fleeting.
