"I Sit and Look Out"

Walt Whitman

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and

upon all oppression and shame,

I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at angruish

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

attempted 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 kill'd 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.