Drains all thy lakes of fish, of fruits thy land. 
  Where is the holy well that bore my name? 
Fled to the fountain back, from whence it came! 
Fair Freedom’s emblem once, which smoothly flows,
And blessings equally on all bestows. 
Here, from the neighbouring nursery of arts,[7]
The students, drinking, raised their wit and parts;
Here, for an age and more, improved their vein,
Their Phoebus I, my spring their Hippocrene. 
Discouraged youths! now all their hopes must fail,
Condemn’d to country cottages and ale;
To foreign prelates make a slavish court,
And by their sweat procure a mean support;
Or, for the classics, read “The Attorney’s Guide;”
Collect excise, or wait upon the tide. 
  Oh! had I been apostle to the Swiss,
Or hardy Scot, or any land but this;
Combined in arms, they had their foes defied,
And kept their liberty, or bravely died;
Thou still with tyrants in succession curst,
The last invaders trampling on the first;
Nor fondly hope for some reverse of fate,
Virtue herself would now return too late. 
Not half thy course of misery is run,
Thy greatest evils yet are scarce begun. 
Soon shall thy sons (the time is just at hand)
Be all made captives in their native land;
When for the use of no Hibernian born,
Shall rise one blade of grass, one ear of corn;
When shells and leather shall for money pass,
Nor thy oppressing lords afford thee brass,[8]
But all turn leasers to that mongrel breed,[9]
Who, from thee sprung, yet on thy vitals feed;
Who to yon ravenous isle thy treasures bear,
And waste in luxury thy harvest there;
For pride and ignorance a proverb grown,
The jest of wits, and to the court unknown. 
  I scorn thy spurious and degenerate line,
And from this hour my patronage resign.

[Footnote 1:  Italy was not properly the native place of St. Patrick, but the place of his education, and whence he received his mission; and because he had his new birth there, by poetical license, and by scripture figure, our author calls that country his native Italy.—­Dublin Edition.]

[Footnote 2:  Orpheus, or the ancient author of the Greek poem on the
Argonautic expedition, whoever he be, says, that Jason, who manned the
ship Argos at Thessaly, sailed to Ireland.  And Adrianus Junius says the
same thing, in these lines: 
  “Ilia ego sum Graiis, olim glacialis Ierne
  Dicta, et Jasoniae puppis bene cognita nautis.”—­Dublin Edition.]

[Footnote 3:  Tacitus, comparing Ireland to Britain, says of the former:  “Melius aditus portusque per commercia et negotiatores cogniti.”—­Agricola, xxiv.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 4:  Fordun, in his Scoti-Chronicon, Hector Boethius, Buchanan, and all the Scottish historians, agree that Fergus, son of Ferquard, King of Ireland, was the first King of Scotland, which country he subdued.—­Scott.]