Wee sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie, Oh, what a panic's in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa sae hasty, Wi' bickering brattle! I wad be laith to rin and chase thee Wi' murd'ring pattle!
I'm truly sorry man's dominion Has broken nature's social union, And justifies that ill opinion Which makes thee startle At me, thy poor earth-born companion And fellow-mortal!
Thou saw the fields lay bare and waste And weary winter comin' fast, And cozie here, beneath the blast, Thou thought to dwell, Till, crash! the cruel coulter past Out thro' thy cell.
But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane[2] In proving foresight may be bain: The best laid schemes o' mice and men Gang aft a-gley, And lea'e us nought but grief and vain, For promised joy.
See what a lovely shell, Small and pure as a pearl, Lying close to my foot. Frail, but a work divine, Made so fairily well With delicate spire and whorl. How exquisitely minute A miracle of design!
The tiny cell is forlorn, Void of the little living will That made it stir on the shore. Did he stand at the diamond door Of his house in a rainbow frill? Did he push when he was uncurled, A golden foot or a fairy horn Through his dim water-world?
Slight, to be crushed with a tap Of my finger-nail on the sand; Small, but a work divine: Frail, but of force to withstand, Year upon year, the shock Of cataract seas that snap The three-decker's oaken spine, Athwart the ledges of rock, Here on the Breton strand.
This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main,-- The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.
Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; Wrecked is the ship of pearl! And every chambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed,-- Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!
Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft steps its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.