I Am—

I am—yet what I am none cares or knows; My friends forsake me like a memory lost; I am the self-consumer of my woes— They rise and vanish in oblivious host, Like shadows in love’s frenzied night— As day’s light brings them not to day.

I am—yet what I am none cares or knows; A lonely flower in the woods that grows And only in the shadow of the night Gains eyes to see its light, and yet I grow, And heed leaves jostling, hear no answering voice, But I live in the thorns where shadows lie, An unbending stalk of flowers that never die.

• John Clare