laravel error message: syntax error, unexpected 'class'

Installed Laravel 5.1 using Composer. php version 5.9

Now, I am getting an error in my index.php

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected 'class' (T_CLASS), expecting identifier (T_STRING) or variable (T_VARIABLE) or '{' or '$' in /home/user/public_html/laravel_one/public/index.php on line 50

index.php

<?php

/**
 * Laravel - A PHP Framework For Web Artisans
 *
 * @package  Laravel
 * @author   Taylor Otwell <taylorotwell@gmail.com>
 */

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Register The Auto Loader
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Composer provides a convenient, automatically generated class loader for
| our application. We just need to utilize it! We'll simply require it
| into the script here so that we don't have to worry about manual
| loading any of our classes later on. It feels nice to relax.
|
*/

require __DIR__.'/../bootstrap/autoload.php';

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Turn On The Lights
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| We need to illuminate PHP development, so let us turn on the lights.
| This bootstraps the framework and gets it ready for use, then it
| will load up this application so that we can run it and send
| the responses back to the browser and delight our users.
|
*/

$app = require_once __DIR__.'/../bootstrap/app.php';

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Run The Application
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Once we have the application, we can handle the incoming request
| through the kernel, and send the associated response back to
| the client's browser allowing them to enjoy the creative
| and wonderful application we have prepared for them.
|
*/

$kernel = $app->make(Illuminate\Contracts\Http\Kernel::class);

$response = $kernel->handle(
    $request = Illuminate\Http\Request::capture()
);

$response->send();

$kernel->terminate($request, $response);

Many places, users are saying that, this is because of php version. Is there any option to solve this without upgrading php version?

via Chebli Mohamed