University of Virginia Library

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 an-     guish 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 cast-     ing lots who shall be kill'd, to preserve the      lives of the rest;
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arro-     gant 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.