Help me find a poem I read in college?

Question

I read it in an Intro to Poetry class, in our textbook, back around 1989, but I think the poem was older, maybe from the 60's or further back? It was mid-length (not short, not long) and about how this guy did everything he was told, never complained, never questioned the system. It implies that he liked the way things were in the world because he never spoke up, he never said otherwise. The idea of the poem was that you've got to speak up if you want to change things. I *think* the last line was "If he was unhappy, we would have heard" or something like that - but I've googled several combinations of possible words and haven't found it. Does it ring a bell for anyone? I'm thinking it has to be a pretty well-known poem, because it was in a book with things like "Ozymandias" by Shelley and "Stopping by woods on a snowy evening" by Frost.

Answer 1

"The Unknown Citizen" by W. H. Auden


http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15549

Answer 2

I Sit and Look Out

Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.

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; 5
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.

Answer 3

ordinarily it somewhat is a descriptive piece of a communication between 2 human beings. i locate it actual and perfect, only with the aid of fact it derives out of your soul, and that i'm conscious that it somewhat is between your first actual poems. i think you felt the urge to co-exist with what handed off between you 2, so which you checklist upon it in complete element, it somewhat is sparkling and mushy, it portrays a character gentle (you) and yet another in a roundabout way indifferent (him). of course the two one in each and every of you, stay in distinctive worlds. i think you deserve something greater genuine, and closer on your values and standards. thank you!