Sacred time

Up betimes, and with Captain Cocke my coach to the Temple to his Counsel again about the prize goods in order to the drawing up of his answer to them, where little done but a confirmation that our best interest is for him to tell the whole truth, and so parted, and I home to the office, where all the morning, and at noon home to dinner, and after dinner all the afternoon and evening till midnight almost, and till I had tired my own backe, and my wife’s, and Deb.’s, in titleing of my books for the present year, and in setting them in order, which is now done to my very good satisfaction, though not altogether so completely as I think they were the last year, when my mind was more at leisure to mind it. So about midnight to bed, where my wife taking some physic overnight it wrought with her, and those coming upon her with great gripes, she was in mighty pain all night long, yet, God forgive me! I did find that I was most desirous to take my rest than to ease her, but there was nothing I could do to do her any good with.

time in a temple
is about the raw truth

even midnight is not
altogether midnight

my wife taking
some over-ripe god to go

Erasure poems derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 15 February 1668.

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