Mouse’s Nest —John Clare 

I found a ball of grass among the hay 

And progged it as I passed and went away; 

And when I looked I fancied something stirred, 

And turned agen and hoped to catch the bird— 

When out an old mouse bolted in the wheats 

With all her young ones hanging at her teats; 

She looked so odd and so grotesque to me, 

I ran and wondered what the thing could be, 

And pushed the knapweed bunches where I stood; 

Then the mouse hurried from the craking brood. 

The young ones squeaked, and as i went away 

She found her nest again among the hay. 

The water o’er the pebbles scarce could run 

And broad old cesspools glittered in the sun. 

—

The Meadow Mouse —Theodore Roethke 

1

In a shoe box stuffed in an old nylon stocking

Sleeps the baby mouse I found in the meadow,
Where he trembled and shook beneath a stick
Till I caught him up by the tail and brought him in,
Cradled in my hand,
A little quaker, the whole body of him trembling,
His absurd whiskers sticking out like a cartoon-mouse,
His feet like small leaves,
Little lizard-feet,
Whitish and spread wide when he tried to struggle away,
Wriggling like a minuscule puppy.

Now he's eaten his three kinds of cheese and drunk from his
       bottle-cap watering-trough—
So much he just lies in one corner,
His tail curled under him, his belly big
As his head; his bat-like ears
Twitching, tilting toward the least sound.

Do I imagine he no longer trembles
When I come close to him?
He seems no longer to tremble.

2

But this morning the shoe-box house on the back porch is empty.
Where has he gone, my meadow mouse,
My thumb of a child that nuzzled in my palm? —
To run under the hawk's wing,
Under the eye of the great owl watching from the elm-tree,
To live by courtesy of the shrike, the snake, the tom-cat.

I think of the nestling fallen into the deep grass,
The turtle gasping in the dusty rubble of the highway,
The paralytic stunned in the tub, and the water rising,—
All things innocent, hapless, forsaken.

—

Mistress Mouse —jim

Her burrowed den she lines with tawny grass,

Reaped from summer’s scythe, the envy of all 

Who dwell above the earth—so snug and warm 

In winter, so cool come with’ring August.

She, the master builder of the meadow, 

Matriarch that finds her mate, conceives, 

Then goes to ground to birth her bitty brood.

Of lurking prey, her native instinct tells 

Her what to do or not to do, and how,

Her wit outwits the wittiest. And so

Her little pups she does tend, and like all

Of the maternal ilk sees them outgrow 

The teat, soon to depart to meadows new,

Courageous naifs. For her the empty nest.