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 CHURCHYARD 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 honoured 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 swelled thy dauntless heart,
And, while Despair the scene was closing,
Commenced thy brief but brilliant part.

Twas then thou sought'st on Albyn's hill,
(When England's sons the strife resigned),
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 clamorous pibroch sung.

Yet who, in Fortune's summer-shine,
To waste life's longest term away,
Would change that glorious dawn of thine,
Though darkened 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.

Whatever might be the real merit of Flora Mac-Ivor's poetry,
the enthusiasm which it intimated was well calculated to make a
corresponding impression upon her lover. The lines were read--read
again--then deposited in Waverley's bosom--then ag