Highland Mary

An important theme in Burns’ “Highland Mary” is the inexorable nature of time, as well as the way people perceive time’s passing. While he was with Mary, Burns did not want time to pass, and experienced it as slow and languorous. He remembers Montgomery Castle as the place where summer the “langest tarry” (Line 6), and he speaks of the passing of time as “golden Hours” flying softly on “angel wings” (Line 13) over him and Mary. However, once he and Mary reluctantly “tore” themselves “asunder” (Line 20) and said their farewells, the once leisurely passing of time changed. An “untimely frost” (Line 21) set in and ended their long summer. Mary died unexpectedly, and Burns never had a chance to see her again. Her body lies “mouldering” (Line 29) and decomposing in the “cauld” (Line 23) ground, and Burns is left only with his memory of her. Written six years after Mary Campbell’s death, “Highland Mary” is explicitly written as Burns’s elegiac recollection of what was and what could have been. He laments the “vows” (Line 17) and plans for the future that were left incomplete. Ultimately, Burns could do nothing to stop the passing of time or the death that waits at its end.