The Maiden and the Unicorn
and other poems for children

Andrew Lansdown

Illustrations: Susan Lansdown

Life Ministries, 2016
(poems, 28 pages)

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Back Cover Blurb

“When [my teacher] read the two outstanding books it made me gleam up with glee,” Lacie, a Year 6/7 student, wrote to Andrew Lansdown about his novels With My Knife and Dragonfox.

Hopefully, readers will be similarly delighted with Andrew’s poems for children in this short collection, The Maiden and the Unicorn.

The charming illustrations by Susan Lansdown should clinch the readers’ joy.

The title poem, “The Maiden and the Unicorn”, is taken from Andrew’s novel, The Red Dragon. It consists of 39 rhyming couplets, and begins:

There was a maiden long ago
as sweet as any man could know

who lost her way in Nahmay Wood
in which a mighty dragon stood.

.        .Sing, ho the maiden maiden oh!
.        .Sing, ho the sweetheart maiden!

The dragon spied her weeping there
and it rejoiced in her despair.

It slithered close with dark desire
to fondle her with dragonfire.

.        .Sing, ho the dragon dragon oh!
.        .Sing, ha the darkheart dragon!

She had no shield, she had no sword,
she had no word of dragonward—

and so she cried for keep and help
to Him in Whom the humble hope.

.        .Sing, ho the maiden maiden oh!
.        .Sing, ho the faintheart maiden!

He bent His ear to hear the cry,
great El Elyon who made the sky.

Then for the maiden all forlorn
He summoned up a unicorn.

.        .Sing, ho the Maker Maker oh!
.        .Sing, hey the kindheart Maker!

At His command (no strain, no toil)
a stallion started from the soil …

.        .© Andrew Lansdown