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Grace is a part of drinking song from the 1831 novel Crotchet Castle by Thomas Love Peacock, to be sung to the tune of The King of France. It is published as the first song in Songs for the Philologists in 1936.
Being the opening verse of the Songs, it suits well the style of the "Viking Club", where Tolkien and E.V. Gordon would "read Old Norse sagas and drink a lot of beer" with students.
The song
Grace
If I drink water while this does last,
May I never again drink wine:
For how can a man, in his life of a span,
Do anything better than dine?
We'll dine and drink, and say if we think
That anything better can be;
And when we have dined, wish all mankind
May dine as well as we.