Five little girls, of Five, Four, Three,
Two, One:
Rolling on the hearthrug, full of tricks
and fun.
Five rosy girls, in years from Ten to
Six:
Sitting down to lessons no
more time for tricks.
Five growing girls, from Fifteen to Eleven:
Music, Drawing, Languages, and food enough
for seven!
Five winsome girls, from Twenty to Sixteen:
Each young man that calls, I say “Now
tell me which you mean!”
Five dashing girls, the youngest
Twenty-one:
But, if nobody proposes, what is there to be done?
Five showy girls but Thirty
is an age
When girls may be engaging, but they somehow
don’t engage.
Five dressy girls, of Thirty-one
or more:
So gracious to the shy young men they snubbed so
much before!
Five passe girls Their
age? Well, never mind!
We jog along together, like the rest of human kind:
But the quondam “careless bachelor”
begins to think he knows
The answer to that ancient problem “how the
money goes”!