Songs of Walt Whitman

Tears! tears! tears!
In the night, in solitude, tears,
On the white shore dripping, dripping, suck'd in by the sand,
Tears, not a star shining, all dark and desolate,
Moist tears from the eyes of a muffled head;
O who is that ghost? that form in the dark, with tears?
What shapeless lump is that, bent, crouch'd there on the sand?
Streaming tears, sobbing tears, throes, choked with wild cries;
O storm, embodied, rising, careering with swift steps along the beach!
O wild and dismal night storm, with wind - O howling and desperate!
O shade so sedate by day, with calm countenance and steady pace,
But away at night as you fly, none looking - O then the unloosen'd ocean,
Of tears! tears! tears!

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.

Skirting the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,)
Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles,
The rushing amorous contact high in space together,
The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,
Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,
In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling,
Till o'er the river pois'd, the twain yet one, a moment's lull,
A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing,
Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate diverse flight,
She hers, he his, pursuing.