Quoted Text

Walt Whitman (1819–1892).  Leaves of Grass.  1900.

83. 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;          5
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,