Walt Whitman

Book XX. By The Roadside: 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, 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.
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