Are You Counting the Cost?

As you strive for the world

For its fame and its joy

Have you care­ful­ly count­ed the cost?

Is the prize rich enough

All your strength to em­ploy

When to win it the soul must be lost?

Are you care­ful­ly count­ing the cost?

Have you thought what it means to be lost?

For the joys that de­cline

Do you Heav­en re­sign?

Are you count­ing the ter­ri­ble cost?

In the crav­ing for wealth

For its glit­tering show

Into grief and des­pair you are cast;

And you know not the peace

Heav’n alone can be­stow

While your soul will be lost at the last.

Leave the rich­es of earth;

Seek the trea­sures ab­ove

And thro’ years that un­ceas­ing­ly roll

Heav’nly pow’rs shall be yours

With the full­ness of love

And the life

end­less life of the soul.