A New Year's Gift for the Dean of St. Patrick's, Given Him at Quilca. By Sheridan

How few can be of grandeur sure!The high may fall, the rich be poor.The only favourite at court,To-morrow may be Fortune's sport;For all her pleasure and her aimIs to destroy both power and fame.Of this the Dean is an example,No instance is more plain and ample.The world did never yet produce,For courts a man of greater use.Nor has the world supplied as yet,With more vivacity and wit;Merry alternately and wise,To please the statesman, and advise.Through all the last and glorious reign,Was nothing done without the Dean;The courtier's prop, the nation's pride;But now, alas! he's thrown aside;He's quite forgot, and so's the queen,As if they both had never been.To see him now a mountaineer!Oh! what a mighty fall is here!From settling governments and thrones,To splitting rocks, and piling stones.Instead of Bolingbroke and Anna,Shane Tunnally, and Bryan Granna,Oxford and Ormond he supplies,In every Irish Teague he spies:So far forgetting his old station,He seems to like their conversation,Conforming to the tatter'd rabble,He learns their Irish tongue to gabble;And, what our anger more provokes,He's pleased with their insipid jokes;Then turns and asks them who do lack aGood plug, or pipefull of tobacco.All cry they want, to every manHe gives, extravagant, a span.Thus are they grown more fond than ever,And he is highly in their favour.Bright Stella, Quilca's greatest pride,For them he scorns and lays aside;And Sheridan is left aloneAll day, to gape, and stretch, and groan;While grumbling, poor, complaining Dingley,Is left to care and trouble singly.All o'er the mountains spreads the rumour,Both of his bounty and good humour;So that each shepherdess and swainComes flocking here to see the Dean.All spread around the land, you'd swearThat every day we kept a fair.My fields are brought to such a pass,I have not left a blade of grass;That all my wethers and my beevesAre slighted by the very thieves.At night right loath to quit the park,His work just ended by the dark,With all his pioneers he comes,To make more work for whisk and brooms.Then seated in an elbow-chair,To take a nap he does prepare;While two fair damsels from the lawns,Lull him asleep with soft cronawns.Thus are his days in delving spent,His nights in music and content;He seems to gain by his distress,His friends are more, his honours less.