In Burns’s poem the mouse unlike the cat does not actually die, but it is made clear that the prospects for the mouse are bleak due to its home being destroyed by the plough and the fact winter is coming and the mouse has no time to build another home for itself:
“Now thou’s turn’d out, for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the Winter’s sleety dribble,
An’craneuch cauld!”
The poems are both basically about a particular ill-fated animal but each has a deeper meaning and message through anthropomorphism.
The cat in Gray’s poem is given feminine characteristics: a “fair round face” illustrates the ideal image of an eighteenth century woman’s face. Gray also uses metaphors to describe the cat which also apply to a lady’s jewels and adornments:
“The velvet of her paws,
Her coat, that with the tortoise vies,
Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes.”
In verse four the comparison of the cat to a woman is made even clearer:
“She stretch’d in vain to reach the prize.
What female heart can gold despise?
What cat’s averse to fish?”
It is clear here that Gray is illustrating how women are seduced by the desire for gold as cats are seduced by the desire for fish. The anthropomorphism continues in verses 5 and 7:
“Presumptious maid” and
“From hence you Beauties, undeceiv’d
Know one false step is ne’er retrieved”.
The last lines of the poem contain a moral:
“Not all that tempts your wand’ring eyes
And heedless hearts, is lawful prize;
Nor all that glisters gold”.
Through the cat Gray created a cautionary tale specifically aimed at women. It’s a warning not to be tempted by what is not rightly theirs, and not to be seduced by glittering appearances because it may not be as good as it looks on the outside.
Gray is very direct with his message of warning to women but he writes in a light-hearted way throughout. However, Burn’s poem is much more serious and sombre. He uses anthropomorphism like Gray to get his message across through an animal, in this case the mouse is used to highlight the social and moral problems that he felt existed in both the public and in his own family – His father died after eighteen years of hard work as a farmer. After his father’s death they had little money, leaving them no choice but to sublease a farm in order to keep their home. These experiences were brought through in to his poem when the mouse had its home destroyed by the plough:
“I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union
An’ justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An’ fellow-mortal!”
With the mouse having lost his home Burns encourages that the mouse should steal to live:
“What then? Poor beastie, thou main live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
‘S a sma’ request:
I’ll get a blessin’ wi’ the lave,
And never miss ‘t”.
This encouragement of stealing would have been regarded very dimly in the eighteenth century community.
Burns also believes that the mouse is better off than him because the mouse only lives in the present whilst he is a man and will remember what he had done. Life has been hard for him as he expects the worst in a bad situation:
“Still thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But, Och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospect drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
I guess and fear!”
Like Gray he has a warning in the end through his words to the mouse:
“The best-laid schemes o’ Mice and Men
Gang aft a-gley
An’ lea’e us nought but grief and pain,
For promis’d joy.”
It means that we should be careful making plans for the future because they often go wrong (gang aft a-gley). His experiences in life have taught him to be careful - also very negative. His theme is made more applicable to everyone, whilst Burns’s poem was only aimed at women.
In Gray’s poem there is a mockery made of the more serious poetry that was around during the eighteenth century. Gray did this by creating his poem in an ode form. Odes are usually serious poems whereas Gray did one about the death of a cat drowned in a goldfish bowl! He also uses formal classical language and illustrations appropriate for a serious subject.
Burns has no humour or mockery in his poem it is very serious. He does not use the ode form or any formal classical language. Instead it is written mostly in a Scottish dialect except for verses 2 and 7 where he uses plain English to highlight his points of the mouse’s home being destroyed and his moral that good plans for the future often go wrong.
In each poem they use a regular rhyming scheme but both follow different patterns.
Both of the poems are fairly gloomy in their outcome, each with a message of caution to the reader. However they are different in the fact that in Gray’s poem has some light-heartedness in the shape of humour and mockery, whereas Burn’s poem is more gloomy and leaves the reader thinking that they, like the mouse have no good prospects for the future, if all good plans go wrong as Burns believes in his poem.
