page_title: Time's Paces
hierarchical_section_title: Time's Paces
caption_attribution_description: English: This is my photocopy of the poem 'Time's Paces' by Henry Twells (1823 - 1900) and published in his book 'Hymns and Other Stray Verses' (1901). It and the book are therefore well out of any copyright restrictions.
context_page_description: Time's Paces is a poem about the apparent speeding up of time as one gets older. It was written by Henry Twells and published in his book Hymns and Other Stray Verses. The poem was popularised by Guy Pentreath in an amended version. Pentreath saw the poem Time's Paces attached to a clock case in the North Transept of Chester Cathedral where it is to be seen today. Recently the poem was even set to music. Pentreath quoted his version of the poem in his last sermon at Wrekin College, Shropshire where he was headmaster till 1952. His version then entered the public domain. Perhaps he wrote the poem down from memory and reconstructed it in the process. He may not have consciously intended to improve on Twells' version.
  The last four lines of Pentreath's version were missed out in Whitrow's quotation in his book, The Natural Philosophy of Time and in some quotations in other books. The first sentence also begins with "For" as in "For when I was a babe. . ." This was added by Whitrow who may have received the poem orally or informally from Pentreath since he gives no reference source for the poem in his otherwise well referenced book.
  The two versions are shown here:
context_section_description: Time's Paces is a poem about the apparent speeding up of time as one gets older. It was written by Henry Twells (1823–1900) and published in his book Hymns and Other Stray Verses (1901). The poem was popularised by Guy Pentreath (1902–1985) in an amended version. Pentreath saw the poem Time's Paces attached to a clock case in the North Transept of Chester Cathedral where it is to be seen today. Recently the poem was even set to music. Pentreath quoted his version of the poem in his last sermon at Wrekin College, Shropshire where he was headmaster till 1952. His version then entered the public domain. Perhaps he wrote the poem down from memory and reconstructed it in the process. He may not have consciously intended to improve on Twells' version.
  The last four lines of Pentreath's version were missed out in Whitrow's quotation in his book, The Natural Philosophy of Time and in some quotations in other books. The first sentence also begins with "For" as in "For when I was a babe . . ." This was added by Whitrow who may have received the poem orally or informally from Pentreath since he gives no reference source for the poem in his otherwise well referenced book. 
  The two versions are shown here:
caption: The poem as it appears in the book Hymns and Other Stray Verses (1901)
exif: {"Image Make": "HP", "Image Model": "HP Scanjet 3800", "Image XResolution": "200", "Image YResolution": "200", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ReferenceBlackWhite": "[0, 255, 128, 255, 128, 255]", "Image ExifOffset": "258", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2012:03:17 11:21:57", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "554", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "578", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Custom", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF DeviceSettingDescription": "[0, 1, 0, 7, 32, 32, 32, 48, 65, 48, 32, 32, 32, 55, 65, 48, 32, 32, 32, 56, ... ]"}