Part of this popped up as a poem on social media this morning. (I expect it often does, but I just happened to notice it on Facebook.)
I often think I ought to learn it, but I probably won’t, for all the reasons described in the song/poem, not to mention an increasingly unreliable memory. Anyway, this is a version performed by the Weavers at Carnegie Hall during a reunion concert (probably in 1980).
And here’s a thread on Mudcat about the origins of the poem, set to music by Pete Seeger, who used these lines as a chorus:
How do I know my youth is all spent?
My get up and go has got up and went
But in spite of it all, I’m able to grin
And think of the places my get up has been.
The thread includes a couple of versions of the poem/lyric. According to a poster to that thread, it was written by Homer A. Shiveley in the 1930s and published in the local newspaper in West Union, Ohio.
Alas, my get up and go seems to want to go several times a night…
David Harley
Wheal Alice Music 