Burns was and is a beloved figure. | The 1996 stamps. | The New Year's Anthem

BUT HE WASN'T JUST CUTE!

Some [Radical, Revolutionary] Romantic Characteristics:

• "On Turning Her up in Her Nest with the Plough, November, 1785" It's personal, and that often (in Wordsworth & Coleridge too) means that it's occasional.

[The French revolution happens in 1789, but I'm sticking to it as a starting date for Romanticism]

• The voice of the common man; it's the voice of a Scottish farmer, than which there can be no man more common.(Thus, the Haggis.)
• The dialect was a choice Burns made. He could write standard English perfectly well; see the second stanza.
• The widening of the circle of sympathy. | "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." | See Wikipedia on the SPCA.
• Romantic loneliness; see the end of the poem.

-- A visual note on line 15, "A daimen-icker in a thrave": A sheaf of corn | ears of corn

-- Audio of "To a Mouse"

• The voice of the common man again. It is actually is a "song," a folk song to which Burns set his lyrics.
• Paraphrase of the first three lines:

If there is someone that because of honest Poverty . . . hangs his head, and all that, he's a coward-slave and we disdain him.

• The significance of "a' that"
-- see below:

And this:

• The prophetic note. | See the last stanza. | Blake considered himself a prophet. Shelley, in "Mont Blanc," also strikes this note.