Thomas Hardy — I Travel As A Phantom Now

I travel as a phantom now, For people do not wish to see In flesh and blood so bare a bough         As Nature makes of me. And thus I visit bodiless Strange gloomy households often at odds, And wonder if Man's consciousness         Was a mistake of God's. And next I meet you, and I pause, And think that if mistake it were, As some have said, O then it was         One that I well can bear! 1915.