I Sit and Look Out

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and 
upon all oppression and shame,
I hear secret convulsive subs from young men at anguish
with themselves, remorseful after deeds done,
I see in low life the mother misused by her children, dying,
neglected, gaunt, desperate,
I see the wife misused by her husband, I see the treacherous
seducer of young women,
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love at-
tempted to be hid, I see these sights on the earth,
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see
martyrs and prisoners,
I observe a famine at sea, I observe the sailors casting lots
who shall be killed to preserve the lives of the rest,
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons
upon laborers, the poor, and upon Negroes, and the like;
All these-all the meanness and agony without end I sitting
look out upon,
See, hear, and am silent.

By Walt Whitman

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