These blithe Satyrs, wanton-eyed,
    Of the Nymphs are paramours: 
  Through the caves and forests wide
    They have snared them mid the flowers;
  Warmed with Bacchus, in his bowers,
    Now they dance and leap alway.—­
    Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
  Nought ye know about to-morrow.

  These fair Nymphs, they are not loth
    To entice their lovers’ wiles. 
  None but thankless folk and rough
    Can resist when Love beguiles. 
  Now enlaced, with wreathed smiles,
    All together dance and play.—­
    Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
  Nought ye know about to-morrow.

  See this load behind them plodding
    On the ass!  Silenus he,
  Old and drunken, merry, nodding,
    Full of years and jollity;
  Though he goes so swayingly,
    Yet he laughs and quaffs alway.—­
    Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
  Nought ye know about to-morrow.

  Midas treads a wearier measure: 
    All he touches turns to gold: 
  If there be no taste of pleasure,
    What’s the use of wealth untold? 
  What’s the joy his fingers hold,
    When he’s forced to thirst for aye?—­
    Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
  Nought ye know about to-morrow.

  Listen well to what we’re saying;
    Of to-morrow have no care! 
  Young and old together playing,
    Boys and girls, be blithe as air! 
  Every sorry thought forswear! 
    Keep perpetual holiday.—–­
    Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
  Nought ye know about to-morrow.

  Ladies and gay lovers young! 
    Long live Bacchus, live Desire! 
  Dance and play; let songs be sung;
    Let sweet love your bosoms fire;
  In the future come what may!—–­
  Youths and maids, enjoy to-day! 
  Nought ye know about to-morrow.

  Fair is youth and void of sorrow;
    But it hourly flies away.

The next, composed by Antonio Alamanni, after Lorenzo’s death and the ominous passage of Charles VIII., was sung by masquers habited as skeletons.  The car they rode on, was a Car of Death designed by Piero di Cosimo, and their music was purposely gloomy.  If in the jovial days of the Medici the streets of Florence had rung to the thoughtless refrain, ‘Nought ye know about to-morrow,’ they now re-echoed with a cry of ‘Penitence;’ for times had strangely altered, and the heedless past had brought forth a doleful present.  The last stanza of Alamanni’s chorus is a somewhat clumsy attempt to adapt the too real moral of his subject to the customary mood of the Carnival.

  Sorrow, tears, and penitence
  Are our doom of pain for aye;
  This dead concourse riding by
  Hath no cry but penitence!

  E’en as you are, once were we: 
  You shall be as now we are: 
  We are dead men, as you see: 
  We shall see you dead men, where
  Nought avails to take great care,
  After sins, of penitence.