I Sit and Look Out

Source: Favim

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.

-- Walt Whitman