My wife again up by four o’clock, to go to gather May-dew; and so back home by seven, to bed, and by and by I up and to the office, where all the morning, and dined at noon at home with my people, and so all the afternoon. In the evening my wife and I all alone, with the boy, by water, up as high as Putney almost, with the tide, and back again, neither staying going nor coming; but talking, and singing, and reading a foolish copy of verses upon my Lord Mayor’s entertaining of all the bachelors, designed in praise to my Lord Mayor, and so home and to the office a little, and then home to bed, my eyes being bad.
Some trouble at Court for fear of the Queen’s miscarrying; she being, as they all conclude, far gone with child.
May morning
alone with the high tide
my bachelor eye
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 11 May 1669.