I Sit and Look Out

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 an-
guish 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 ne-
groes, and the like;
All these—All the meanness and agony without end, I
sitting, look out upon,
See, hear, and am silent.