Dance and Sing

Commissioned in honor of the Macalester Festival Chorale’s twentieth anniversary, Dance and Sing is a lively, rhythmically compelling song set to a text by John Gay. Its quick phrases celebrate the energy of youth while gently underscoring its ephemeral nature.

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.
Youth’s the season made for joys,
Love is then our duty.

Let us drink and sport today,
Ours is not tomorrow.
Love with youth flies swift away,
Age is nought but sorrow.
Dance and sing,
Time’s on the wing,
Life never know the return of spring.
Let us drink and sport today,
Ours is not tomorrow.

John Gay – The Beggar’s Opera