To a Mouse Summary
Robert Burns

To a Mouse Overview

“To a Mouse” is one of the most celebrated poems in Scottish history. It was authored by the Scottish poet Robert Burns in 1785. A legend surrounds the poem’s composition, saying that Burns composed it spontaneously in the moment after accidentally destroying a mouse’s nest with his plow. The poem was published in the Kilmarnock edition, a 1786 edition of poems by Burns. The edition’s full title is Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, but it is better known under the name of its editor, John Kilmarnock.