Day of the High Cities, 11th of Fall, 525 M.E. (Betelgeuse): I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world and upon all the 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 and observe sailors casting lots over who shall be killed 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, 1855).