The Black Family Weblog

As requested I will start posting a poem or two by my favorite poets. Perhaps Jess will do the same. Comments are always welcomed.

I Sit and Look Out by: Walt Whitman from: Leaves of Grass

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.

“…look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame;”(lines 1-2)
“All day long my disgrace is before me, and shame has covered my face.” Psalms 44:15

“I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done”(lines 2-4)
“The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Matthew 13:49-50