Reading Time: 4 minutes The best-laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley, said the Scottish poet Robert Burns in 1785. Burns, as the plowman, destroys the nest of a mouse who then has no resources or wherewithal to rebuild it over the winter. Burns, as the plowman, rues his own plans that have often gone awry. The mouse is the lucky one as it has no concept of the past or the future and lives only in the present. The man, on the other hand, understands past predicaments and future dreads.