No. 209 I Don’t Expect to Stay or Done With the World, Osh 88
Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)
Jesus, my all, to heav’n is gone,
And I don’t expect to stay much longer here;
He whom I fix my hopes upon,
And I don’t expect to stay much longer here.
I am done with the world, and I want to serve the Lord,
And I don’t expect to stay much longer here.
This spiritual with its text core made of the John Cennick words (given more fully under ‘River of Jordan’) seems to have been first recorded for the earliest edition of the Sacred Harp, that is, in the early 1840’s. A negro version of the chorus is in Marsh, p. 188.