A Game of Fives

by

Published in Lewis Carroll's collection, Phantasmagoria and Other Poems (1869). Illustrated by Arthur B. Frost in the 1911 edition. "Inscribed to a dear Child: in memory of golden summer hours and whispers of a summer sea."
A Game of Fives 

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 passé 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”!
If you enjoyed Carroll's poem, you might like Phantasmagoria, it's quite a ghost story!