The Dark Side

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Title:     The Dark Side
Author: Walt Whitman [More Titles by Whitman]

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 killed, to preserve the lives of the rest;

I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon labourers, 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.

[The end]
Walt Whitman's poem: Dark Side

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