Published Works

Books by Whitman

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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,

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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.

Distributed under a Creative Commons License. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price, editors.