When a Girl is Only Seven

(From “Just Like a Dream” )

When a girl is only seven

Her one idea of heaven

Is a place where she has lollies iced in plenty.

But she changes her ambition

And demands a new condition

For her paradise when she is nearly twenty.

When in rompers she cavorts

Boys are often mere spoil-sports,

They are not her friends in dolce far niente.

 

When a girl is but eleven

She to many fads is given,

And is apt to eat too much and far too often;

But when romance makes her quiet

She considers well her diet;

Her figure now needs shape, not merely stuffin’ ;

When in evening gown she glides

Boys are cavaliers and guides,

For towards the male sex now her opinions soften.

 

A girl is a maiden at sweet seventeen,

And oft at eighteen a fiancee;

At nineteen and twenty she’s suitors a-plenty,

Her prospects are then quite romancy.

But when she’s thirty no matter how flirty

Her future is then very chancy.

And when she is forty no matter how naughty,

And when she is fifty now matter how thrifty,

She finds she is nobody’s fancy.

 

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