However, he could not support himself with just his writing, so he turned to farming for a means of making money. One day in November of 1785, while in the fields, he overturned a mouse's nest. Overcome with guilt he used his poetry to write a letter to the creature. His piece is called "To a Mouse." The poem starts off with Burns talking about the nature of the mouse - how it is always panicking and hurrying. He then goes on to apologize to the mouse for making it that way by breaking "nature's social union" (line 8). He expresses his sorrow at making his fellow creature startled because of him. He recognizes stealing as the mouses need to live, and lets the mouse know that he wouldn't even miss what little the mouse takes. He expresses sorrow at the fact that he ruined the mouses home in the middle of the winter, when there is nothing left to build with, and tells the mouse that he is sorry for ruining a place that the mouse thought would be safe for the winter. He then goes on to compare that pain that the mouse feels for having been turned out with nothing to help him with the cold, to the pain that man feels when plans go wrong, and people are left with nothing. He ends with saying that the mouse is more fortunate than he, for the mouse is only concerned with the present, while the future and past haunt man. .
All of these different parts are related - they all tell a story. Because Burns wrote in such a way as to tell a story, the audience can understand what he is saying. He makes it easy to read, and relatable. Each time he turns to a new aspect of what happened with the mouse, he starts a new stanza. This helps keep the audience up to topic changes. Burns also uses a theme that everyone can understand - though different, we are all similar. Many of the problems that the mouse had are problems that all of us have. He personified the mouses problems in terms that relate to all of us.