The Bully And The Mouse

John Clare’s poems “The Mouse’s Nest” seems to have a theme that can be described as the disturbance man cause in the natural course of nature.  The voice of the poem talks about disturbing a small ball of grass as he is walking by and noticing a nursing mouse running away from it with her baby mice still attached to her breast.  The narrator chases after the mother to get a closer look at the disturbance he caused, but the mother runs away from her babies as the narrator approaches.  It was not until the narrator went away that the mouse returned to her litter and her motherly duties she was attending to before she was disturbed.  John Clare’s pastoral like language portrays the narrator as a bully who believes he is entitled to disturb and witness the natural course of all other creatures because he is big enough to do so.  It is interesting that the mouse was also a nursing mother which gives the mouse even more sympathy for the ruckus caused by the trampling of the man walking through the field.  The mouse was ensuring the survival of her young ones while the narrator deemed it necessary to disrupt this process.