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’!