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Nay, Tell Me Not To-day the Publish'd Shame

per.00127.002

NAY, TELL ME NOT TO-DAY THE PUBLISH'D SHAME.1

Nay, tell me not to-day the publish'd shame, Read not to-day for once the journal's crowded page, The merciless reports verbatim, still branding fore- 
  head after forehead,
The guilty column following guilty column.
To-day to me the tale refusing, Turning from it—from the White Capitols of the Na- 
 tion turning,
Far fom their swelling domes, topt with statues, More endless, jubilant, vital visions rise Unreck'd, unpublish'd, unreported.
Through all your quiet ways, or North or South, you 
  Equal States, your honest farms,
Your myriad untold manly healthy lives, or East or 
  West, city or country,
Your noiseless mothers, sisters, wives, unconscious 
  of their good,
Your mass of homes nor poor nor rich, in vision rise 
 —(even your excellent poverties,)
Your self-distilling, never-ceasing virtues, self-de- 
  nials, graces,
Your eternal base of deep integrities within, timid 
  but certain,
Your blessings stealthily bestowed, sure as the light, 
  and still,
(Plunging to these, as a determined diver down the 
  deep hidden waters,)
These, these, to-day I brood upon—all else refusing, 
  these will I con,
All day to these give audience.
WALT WHITMAN.

Notes

1. Reprinted in Conservator 7 (October 1896): 121-122; Leaves of Grass (1897). [back]

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