Analysis of I Sit And Look Out

Walt Whitman 1819 (West Hills) – 1892 (Camden)




   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.                                          10


Scheme ABCDEFGDHIJKLMNOPNQ
Poetic Form
Metre 110110110101010011 01001 111001011111101 010101011 1101101001101010 010110 1101011010110100010 1110 110111000010101011 11111101 1101011010010011100 100 101010111010101011 11110101101 101010010111001001 1000100110001 11101001000111101 101 110110
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 1,043
Words 158
Sentences 2
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 19
Lines Amount 19
Letters per line (avg) 37
Words per line (avg) 10
Letters per stanza (avg) 705
Words per stanza (avg) 197
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 25, 2023

47 sec read
272

Walt Whitman

Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. more…

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