Prophet without honor

(Lord’s day). To church in the morning; Mr. Mills preached, who, I expect, should take in snuffe that my wife not come to his child’s christening the other day. The winter coming on, many of parish ladies are come home and appear at church again; among others, the three sisters the Thornbury’s, a very fine, and the most zealous people that ever I saw in my life, even to admiration, if it were true zeal. There was also my pretty black girl, Mrs. Dekins, and Mrs. Margaret Pen, this day come to church in a new flowered satin suit that my wife helped to buy her the other day.
So home to dinner, and to church in the afternoon to St. Gregory’s, by Paul’s, where I saw Mr. Moore in the gallery and went up to him and heard a good sermon of Dr. Buck’s, one I never heard before, a very able man. So home, and in the evening I went to my Valentine, her father and mother being out of town, to fetch her to supper to my house, and then came Sir W. Pen and would have her to his, so with much sport I got them all to mine, and we were merry, and so broke up and to bed.

I preach the winter
coming on, the thorn in life.
A black flower went to
my Valentine—
we were merry and broke.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 6 October 1661.

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