Summary
After expressing sympathy with the mouse's dire circumstances, the farmer reassures it that it's not alone—humans, too, often find their hopes dashed and their plans ruined. In fact, says the farmer, the most carefully made plans of both mice and men sometimes go wrong. When that happens, both the mice and the men are left, not with the joy they expected, but with grief and pain. And yet, despite all they have in common, the farmer envies the mouse. The mouse, after all, lives moment-to-moment, without remembering the past or planning ahead. Meanwhile, the farmer finds himself dwelling on bad times in the past, and looking with anxiety and dread to the future.
Analysis
The poem takes a sudden turn in its final moments, revealing that the farmer, for all his generosity and his relative material comforts compared to the mouse, has problems of his own. In a sense, we see our speaker's true self for the first time in this stanza, as his parental, protective tone suddenly becomes introspective and searching. It's almost as if Burns has decided to turn the camera, showing us the face of the speaker rather than looking out at the speaker's surroundings. Here, though he doesn't say exactly what his fears or regrets are, we learn that the speaker has plenty of them. In fact, Burns suggests, it's better to be cold and hungry but ignorant of the past and future, like the mouse, than to be comfortable but emotionally distressed like the farmer. At the same time, the poem hints, the farmer's emotional complexities go hand-in-hand with his material comforts. He has the uniquely human ability to think about the past and the future, which lets him, and other humans, plant and harvest crops. His ability to plan on such a complex level gives him food to eat, even in winter, but it's also a heavy burden. Indeed, it grants him the powers of empathy and imagination, letting him feel the mouse's pain in addition to his own.
At the same time, Burns never suggests that the mouse is without consciousness or complex feelings. After all, the now-famous phrase "The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men/Gang aft agley" implies that mice, like people, are capable of planning—even if their plans also sometimes fall apart. Therefore, even while the poem ends by reminding us that human consciousness is a unique struggle and responsibility, it also claims that the difference is only one of degree. The speaker believes that the mouse, like himself, has plans and dreams. They may be less complicated, and that difference in complication is a meaningful one—yet the speaker and his listener still have a great deal in common.
