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;
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.

Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)