WHEN BEAUTY IS BALD by Edward Dyson

A Melbourne barber with a large practice among ladies insists that “women are losing their hair” almost as early, as easily and as often as men. The ravages of the anti-hair germ are “more easily covered up in women than in men, but partial baldness is so common among even young women as to suggest that the dropping of hair is a race characteristic.” The time is coming, he thinks, when women will be as indifferent to baldness as men are.

I’ve sung of Honor’s golden hair
   And Hero’s auburn tresses,
Of Bella’s back abundance, where
   The sun throws his caresses;
I’ve sung of curl, and coil, and braid;
   On meshes I’ve dilated,
Until at last I’m sore afraid
There’s nothing re the hair of maid
   That I have left unstated.


‘Twill much relieve the constant strain
   Of rhyming to extol her
When on the roof of Sophie’s brain
   Appears a bright cupola.
The poet’s verse will freshly run,
   Effects will come much faster,
If he may tell the darling one
Her skull is glowing like the sun
   And smooth as alabaster.


New stimulus the singer nerves,
   When beauty, scorning switches,
Adds to her many swelling curves
   A baldness that bewitches.
We’ve sung too many wigs, I swear,
   And now the poet mocks myths,
For Juliet in her head of air
Outshines the moon, and everywhere,
   Love really laughs at locksmiths.