Incessantly sobbing and sighing, his word
Was: “Pray now, will speech e’er return to my bird?”
A bare-headed mendicant happened to pass;
Whose scalp was close shaved, smooth and shining as glass.15
At once our Poll-parrot her silence forswore,
Screamed after the mendicant: “Poor head! Sore! Sore!
Old bald-pate! old bald-pate! What is it thou’st done?
Upset some one’s oil jar? The oil is’t all gone?”
The passers-by smiled all at Polly’s mistake,
’Tween bald-head and bare-head no diff’rence to make.