Analysis of 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.