ABSTRACT
One sleepless night in 1715 Elizabeth Thomas watched grains of sand gather speed as they wound their way through the narrowed centre of her hourglass and tumbled to the bottom, to rest motionless. She wrote:
See, in this emblematick Glass, How swift thy circling Minutes pass: ‘Ere we can say, this is begun, Another Minute hurries on; Another that; still more succeed, And on each others Footsteps tread. Such constant Motion, Time does keep, Whether poor Mortals wake or sleep, Or sit, or walk, or work, or play, His steady Course knows no Delay; And unperceiv’d, Life glides away.1
