A Poem by Whitman

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 sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remourseful after

deeds

done;

I see, in low life, the mother misued by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt,

desperate;

I see the wife misued 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

negros and the like;

All these - All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out upon

See hear, and am silent.

Walt Whitman