Songs from The Beggar’s Opera: Air IV-Cotillion

Act II, Scene iv, Air IV—Cotillion
 Youth’s the season made for joys,
 Love is then our duty:
 She alone who that employs,
 Well deserves her beauty.
 Let’s be gay
 While we may,
 Beauty’s a flower despised in decay.

Chorus. Youth’s the season, etc.

 Let us drink and sport to-day,
 Ours is not to-morrow:
 Love with youth flies swift away,
 Age is naught but sorrow.
 Dance and sing,
 Time’s on the wing,
 Life never knows the return the spring.

Chorus. Let us drink, etc.