MORALITY

 Words by Hannah More: Florella's Song, The Search After Happiness.
 Tune: Death Song of the Cherokee Indian (Alknomook)
   (Sacred Harp, p. 136, Southern harmony, p. 112)
 MIDI: http://www.ccel.org/s/southern_harmony/midi/Morality.midi

 While beauty and pleasure are now in their prime,
 And folly and fashion expect our whole time,
 Ah! let not those phantoms our wishes engage;
 Let us live so in youth that we blush not in age.

 Though the vain and the gay may attend us a while,
 Yet let not their flatt'ry our prudence beguile;
 Let us covet those charms that will never decay,
 Nor listen to all that deceivers can say.

 "How the tints of the rose, and the jasmine's perfume,
 The eglantine's fragrance, the lilac's gay bloom,
 Though fair and though fragrant unheeded may lie,
 For that neither is sweet when Florella is by."

 I sigh not for beauty, nor languish for wealth,
 But grant me, kind Providence, virtue and health;
 Then, richer than kings and as happy than they,
 My days shall pass sweetly and swiftly away.

 When age shall steal on me, and youth is no more,
 And the moralist Time shakes his glass at my door
 What charm in lost beauty or wealth shall I find?
 My treasure, my wealth, is a sweet peace of mind.

 That peace I'll preserve then as pure as 'twas given,
 And taste in my bosom an earnest of heaven;
 For virtue and wisdom can warm the cold scene,
 And sixty can flourish as gay as sixteen.

 And when long I the burden of life shall have borne,
 And Death with his sickle shall cut the ripe corn,
 Resign'd to my fate without murmur or sigh,
 I'll bless the kind summons, and lie down and die.