Migrant

Up and to the office, where all the morning. At noon home to dinner, where Anthony Joyce, and I did give my final answer, I would give but 500l. with my sister, and did show him the good offer made us in the country, to which I did now more and more incline, and intend to pursue that. After dinner I to White Hall to a Committee for Tangier, where the Duke of Yorke was, and I acquitted myself well in what I had to do. After the Committee up, I had occasion to follow the Duke into his lodgings, into a chamber where the Duchesse was sitting to have her picture drawn by Lilly, who was there at work. But I was well pleased to see that there was nothing near so much resemblance of her face in his work, which is now the second, if not the third time, as there was of my wife’s at the very first time. Nor do I think at last it can be like, the lines not being in proportion to those of her face.
So home, and to the office, where late, and so to bed.

her home is
the mad country to which
I commit myself

what a picture
drawn by time
like the lines in her face


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 24 March 1666.

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