This morning with Mr. Coventry at Whitehall about getting a ship to carry my Lord’s deals to Lynne, and we have chosen the Gift. Thence at noon to my Lord’s, where my Lady not well, so I eat a mouthfull of dinner there, and thence to the Theatre, and there sat in the pit among the company of fine ladys, &c.; and the house was exceeding full, to see Argalus and Parthenia, the first time that it hath been acted: and indeed it is good, though wronged by my over great expectations, as all things else are. Thence to my father’s to see my mother, who is pretty well after her journey from Brampton. She tells me my aunt is pretty well, yet cannot live long. My uncle pretty well too, and she believes would marry again were my aunt dead, which God forbid. So home.
getting the gift
of heat in the pit
to see time go wrong
as all things are
to see who I am
not to believe
in a dead god
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 31 January 1660/61.