I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame,
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George Caleb Bingham, Fur Traders Descending the Mississippi, 1845 |
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done,
I see in love life the mother missed by her children, dying, elected, gaunt, desperate,
I see the wife missed 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 working battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see martyrs and prisoners,
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Winslow Homer, The Gulf Stream, 1899 |
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;
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Wm. Sidney Mount, The Verdict of the People, 1854-55 |
All these -- all the meanness and agony without end I sit looking out upon,
See, hear, and am silent.
-Walt Whitman
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John Frederick Kensett, Sunset at Sea, ca. 1873
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