Robert Burns, the Scottish poet, was born this day in 1759. The title refers to one of today's poems, "To a Mouse," and the story of how a Scottish farmer plowing his field accidently plows up the nest of a frightened mouse.
The Scot dialect in which Burns writes his poems is highly annoying, but the sentiment of the poem stands up — that misfortune can pop up at any time without warning and that "the best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley."
That's the line everyone remembers from the poem, but this sentiment is the real takeaway — "Backward cast my eye/on prospects drear!/an' forward, tho' I canna see,/I guess an' fear." In other words, we're all flying blind, wondering when the plowman will turn our lives over.
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