Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, NAY, TELL ME NOT TO-DAY THE PUBLISH'D SHAME, by WALT WHITMAN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

NAY, TELL ME NOT TO-DAY THE PUBLISH'D SHAME, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
Last Line: All day to these give audience
Subject(s): Newspapers; United States


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 forehead after forehead,
The guilty column following guilty column.
To-day to me the tale refusing,
Turning from it''"from the White Capitols of the Nation 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 orWest, city or country,
Your noiseless mothers, sisters, wives, unconsciousof their good,
Your mass of homes nor poor nor rich, in vision rise''"(even your excellent poverties,)
Your self-distilling, never-ceasing virtues, self-denials, graces,
Your eternal base of deep integrities within, timidbut certain,
Your blessings stealthily bestowed, sure as the light,and still,
(Plunging to these, as a determined diver down thedeep hidden waters,)
These, these, to-day I brood upon''"all else refusing, these will I con,
All day to these give audience.


Let others finish specimens, I never finish specimens,
I start them by exhaustless laws as Nature does, fresh and modern continually.

I give nothing as duties,
What others give as duties I give as living impulses,
(Shall I give the heart's action as a duty?)

Let others dispose of questions, I dispose of nothing, I arouse unanswerable questions,
Who are they I see and touch, and what about them?
What about these likes of myself that draw me so close by tender directions and indirections?

I call to the world to distrust the accounts of my friends, but listen to my enemies, as I myself do
I charge you forever reject those who would expound me, for I cannot expound myself,
I charge that there be no theory or school founded out of me,
I charge you to leave all free, as I have left all free.

After me, vista!
O I see life is not short, but immeasurably long,
I henceforth tread the world chaste, temperate, an early riser, a steady grower,
Every hour the semen of centuries, and still of centuries.

I must follow up these continual lessons of the air, water, earth,
I perceive I have no time to lose.





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