get up

Get Up!

This poem appears in all the collections from 1871 onwards.  In a letter to Skipsey in that year, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the Pre-Raphaelite artist and poet, wrote of the poem: "This little piece seems to me equal to anything in the language for direct and quiet pathetic force."  The poem also inspired a painting of the same name by Alfred Dixon (1842-1919).

“Get up!” the caller cries, “Get up!
And in the dead of night
To win the bairns their bite and sup
I rise, a weary wight.

My flannel dudden donn’d, thrice o’er
I kiss the bairns, and then
With a sigh I shut the door
I may not open again.

This seemed to cry out for singing unaccompanied in a folk style.  I wanted the opening phrase to sound like an imitation of the caller's cry.  I have made slight alterations in verse two - the original has "my birds are kiss'd" in line 2, and "with a whistle" in line 3.  I preferred the active rather than the passive and wanted the meaning to be immediately apparent (in a song, you only hear the words in passing, and can't study the text as you can a poem), while the significance of the whistle was unclear to me. I hope this doesn't invalidate Rossetti's opinion.

Alfred Dixon's picture: Get Up

Original poem:

"Get up!" the caller calls, "Get up!"
  And in the dead of night
To win the bairns their bite and sup
  I rise a weary wight.

My flannel dudden donn'd, thrice o'er
  My bairns are kiss'd, and then
I with a whistle shut the door
  I may not ope again.

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