It is rare that one can see in a little boy the promise of a man, but one can almost always see in a little girl the threat of a woman. ~ Alexandre Dumas

A girl is a person who screams at the mouse and smiles at the wolf. ~ Shyam Kapoor

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

There’s a lot that can be said about the child who is not yet a woman, and poets and pundits alike have approached this fascinating subject. Whether praising her beauty, speaking of her youth, or just dreaming of her, poets have written many memorable lines about the wiles – and wiliness – of the young female.

Jane Taylor (1783?1824) wrote of two girls that sound nearly too good to be true in “The Good Natured-Girls:”

The little girl Mary in Ann Taylor’s “About the Little Girl Who Beat Her Sister” sounds a bit more believable:

Interestingly enough, the Taylors Jane and Ann were sisters!

When someone of the male persuasion is writing about girls, the poem is often as fanciful as Jane Taylor’s “The Good-Natured Girls,” albeit in a very different way.

Take Henry Lawson’s (1867-1922) “The Shearer’s Dream,” for instance:

No less dreamy but much more earnest was Carl Sandburg’s (1878-1967) desire to find a “Dream Girl:”

The truth about girls may not be contained in any of these poems. Likely, it is not. However, these girl poems illustrate the hold that the idea of girls has on the imagination – whether the girl is big or small!