A violet by a mossy stone/Half hidden from the eye!/Fair as a star, when only one/Is shining in the sky.

On a late walk a few evenings ago, I left by the back gate and was stopped in my tracks by a pale pink flower lying on the leaf litter, a thing of beauty I would not have seen had I not walked that route.

I stooped down and picked it up, tried to right it, found a stick to bolster the top-heavy plant. I didn’t know what it was at first — a friend eventually figured out that it was a spider lily — but that didn’t matter.

It was a beautiful object tucked away, blooming only for itself and whoever might see it. Showy enough for a grand garden but decorating the woods instead.

Most of us know people like that, don’t we? Wordsworth did. The violet he describes is a metaphor for Lucy, a maid who “dwelt among the untrodden ways.”

In the words of another British writer, George Eliot, “Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing.”

But these women, these people, these flowers — they bloom anyway. They may be half hidden, but (and maybe because of this) they are completely themselves.