I SIT AND LOOK OUT UPON ALL THE SUFFERINGS OF THE WORLD

 

I sit and look upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all opression and shame,

I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish

with themselves, remorseful after deed done,

II see in low life the mother misused by her children,

dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate,

I see the wife misused by the 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, tiranny, 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

Whalt Withman   ( 1819 - 1892)