Lost

Called up at two in the morning for letters for my Lord from the Duke of York, but I went to bed again till 5. Trimmed early this morning.
This morning the Captain did call over all the men in the ship (not the boys), and give every one of them a ducat of the King’s money that he gave the ship, and the officers according to their quality. I received in the Captain’s cabin, for my share, sixty ducats. The rest of the morning busy writing letters. So was my Lord that he would not come to dinner.
After dinner to write again in order to sending to London, but my Lord did not finish his, so we did not send to London to-day.
A great part of the afternoon at nine-pins with my Lord and Mr. Hetley. I lost about 4s.
Supped with my Lord, and after that to bed.
This night I had a strange dream of bepissing myself, which I really did, and having kicked the clothes off, I got cold and found myself all muck-wet in the morning, and had a great deal of pain in making water which made me very melancholy.

At two in the morning,
the ship not the ship
and the ending no end,
on my lost bed
I dream of having clothes
of cold water.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 28 May 1660.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.