I Sit And Look Out

by Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

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 behid--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, lookout upon,
See, hear, and am silent.

Walter Whitman was an American poet, essayist, journalist and humanist. Proclaimed the greatest of all American poets by many foreign observers a mere four years after his death, he is viewed as the first urban poet. His work has been described as a "rude shock" and "the most audacious and debatable contribution yet made to American literature".