The poem
Ye banks and braes and streams around The castle o' Montgomery, Green be your woods, and fair your flowers, Your waters never drumlie! There simmer first unfauld her robes, And there the langest tarry; For there I took the last fareweel O' my sweet Highland Mary.
How sweetly bloomed the gay green birk, How rich the hawthorn's blossom, As underneath their fragrant shade I clasped her to my bosom! The golden hours on angel wings Flew o'er me and my dearie; For dear to me as light and life Was my sweet Highland Mary.
Wi' mony a vow and locked embrace Our parting was fu' tender; And, pledging aft to meet again, We tore oursels asunder; But, O, fell Death's untimely frost, That nipt my flower sae early! Now green's the sod, and cauld's the clay, That wraps my Highland Mary!
O pale, pale now, those rosy lips I aft hae kissed sae fondly; And closed for aye the sparkling glance That dwelt on me sae kindly; And mouldering now in silent dust That heart that lo'ed me dearly! But still within my bosom's core Shall live my Highland Mary.
In Doris Kearns Goodwin's book "Team of Rivals" Ms. Goodwin tells of a shared love of poet Robert Burns between Mary Todd Lincoln and President Lincoln.
Mary traveled to Burns' birthplace in Scotland four years after Lincoln's Asassination, where , "recalling one of her favorite poems about a lost love. she 'sighed' over poor 'Highland Mary's grave'."