I Sit and Look Out

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1. I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
2. oppression and shame,
3. I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with
4. themselves, remorseful after deeds done,
5. I see in low life the mother misused by her children, dying,
6. neglected, gaunt, desperate,
7. I see the wife misused by her husband, I see the treacherous seducer
8. of young women,
9. I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love attempted to be
10. hid, I see these sights on the earth,
11. I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see martyrs and
12. prisoners,
13. I observe a famine at sea, I observe the sailors casting lots who
14. shall be kill’d to preserve the lives of the rest,
15. I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon
16. laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
17. All these--all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look out upon,
18. See, hear, and am silent.