There were obvious reasons why the politic Chieftain was desirous to place the example of this young hero under the eye of Waverley, with whose romantic disposition it coincided so peculiarly.  But his letter turned chiefly upon some trifling commissions which Waverley had promised to execute for him in England, and it was only toward the conclusion that Edward found these words:  ’I owe Flora a grudge for refusing us her company yesterday; and, as I am giving you the trouble of reading these lines, in order to keep in your memory your promise to procure me the fishing-tackle and cross-bow from London, I will enclose her verses on the Grave of Wogan.  This I know will tease her; for, to tell you the truth, I think her more in love with the memory of that dead hero than she is likely to be with any living one, unless he shall tread a similar path.  But English squires of our day keep their oak-trees to shelter their deer parks, or repair the losses of an evening at White’s, and neither invoke them to wreathe their brows nor shelter their graves.  Let me hope for one brilliant exception in a dear friend, to whom I would most gladly give a dearer title.’

The verses were inscribed,

    To an Oak Tree

    In the Church-Yard of ——­, in the Highlands of Scotland,
    said to mark the Grave of Captain Wogan, killed in 1649.

    Emblem of England’s ancient faith,
      Full proudly may thy branches wave,
    Where loyalty lies low in death,
      And valour fills a timeless grave.

    And thou, brave tenant of the tomb! 
      Repine not if our clime deny,
    Above thine honour’d sod to bloom
      The flowerets of a milder sky.

    These owe their birth to genial May;
      Beneath a fiercer sun they pine,
    Before the winter storm decay;
      And can their worth be type of thine?

    No! for, ’mid storms of Fate opposing,
      Still higher swell’d thy dauntless heart,
    And, while Despair the scene was closing,
      Commenced thy brief but brilliant part.

    ’T was then thou sought’st on Albyn’s hill,
      (When England’s sons the strife resign’d)
    A rugged race resisting still,
      And unsubdued though unrefined.

    Thy death’s hour heard no kindred wail,
      No holy knell thy requiem rung;
    Thy mourners were the plaided Gael,
      Thy dirge the clamourous pibroch sung.

    Yet who, in Fortune’s summer-shine
      To waste life’s longest term away,
    Would change that glorious dawn of thine,
      Though darken’d ere its noontide day!

    Be thine the tree whose dauntless boughs
      Brave summer’s drought and winter’s gloom. 
    Rome bound with oak her patriots’ brows,
      As Albyn shadows Wogan’s tomb.