What am I?

When Clare asked: What am I?
It seemed nobody would reply.
He had to self-consume woes
Including shadows of his love.

They edited shadows as shades-
With Victorian prudery in public.
Yet he was, living in an asylum,
His poems edited by a steward.

Now the steward and the inmate
Are both safely below the grass
With the same vaulted sky above.
A question still stays what am I?

(Reading John Clare’s poem “What Am I “)