Leaves of gas

Up by four o’clock; and, getting my things ready, and recommending the care of my house to W. Hewer, I with my boy Tom, whom I take with me, to the Bull, in Bishopsgate Street, and there, about six, took coach, he and I, and a gentleman and his man, there being another coach also, with as many more, I think, in it; and so away to Bishop’s Stafford, and there dined, and changed horses and coach, at Mrs. Aynsworth’s; but I took no knowledge of her. Here the gentleman and I to dinner, and in comes Captain Forster, an acquaintance of his, he that do belong to my Lord Anglesey, who had been at the late horse-races at Newmarket, where the King now is, and says that they had fair weather there yesterday, though we here, and at London, had nothing but rain, insomuch that the ways are mighty full of water, so as hardly to be passed. Here I hear Mrs. Aynsworth is going to live at London: but I believe will be mistaken in it; for it will be found better for her to be chief where she is, than to have little to do at London. There being many finer than she there. After dinner away again and come to Cambridge, after much bad way, about nine at night; and there, at the Rose, I met my father’s horses, with a man, staying for me. But it is so late, and the waters so deep, that I durst not go to-night; but after supper to bed; and there lay very ill, by reason of some drunken scholars making a noise all night, and vexed for fear that the horses should not be taken up from grass, time enough for the morning. Well pleased all this journey with the conversation of him that went with me, who I think is a lawyer, and lives about Lynne, but his name I did not ask.

in bull weather
we are mistaken for horses

deep as drunken scholars
in the grass

enough for all
the conversation that lives

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 23 May 1668

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