(Easter day). Up and this day put on my close-kneed coloured suit, which, with new stockings of the colour, with belt, and new gilt-handled sword, is very handsome.
To church alone, and so to dinner, where my father and brother Tom dined with us, and after dinner to church again, my father sitting below in the chancel. After church done, where the young Scotchman preaching I slept all the while, my father and I to see my uncle and aunt Wight, and after a stay of an hour there my father to my brother’s and I home to supper, and after supper fell in discourse of dancing, and I find that Ashwell hath a very fine carriage, which makes my wife almost ashamed of herself to see herself so outdone, but to-morrow she begins to learn to dance for a month or two.
So to prayers and to bed. Will being gone, with my leave, to his father’s this day for a day or two, to take physique these holydays.
is my knee red
which hand is handsome
alone with each other
we begin to learn to dance
for two to pray
being one is holy
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 19 April 1663.