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Unicorn Poetry
The Lion and the Unicorn - Nursery Rhyme
The lion and the Unicorn
Were fighting for the crown;
The lion beat the unicorn
All around the town.
Some gave them white bread
And some gave them brown;
Some gave them plum cake
And drummed them out of town.
A poem from sixteenth-century Germany
The wise man says these animals
Lust greatly after pretty girls.
This way to catch them is the best,
A youth in woman's clothes is dressed
And then with dainty steps he flaunts
About the Unicorn's bright haunts.
For when this creature spies a maid
Straight in her lap he lays his head.
The huntsman, doffing his disguise
Saws off the horn and wins the prize.
Song of Alexander by Pfaffen Lamprecht - 12th c. (exerpt)
I had from this most wealthy queen
A beast of proud and noble mien
That bears in his brow the ruby-stone
And yields himself to maids alone.
But few such unicorns are found
On this or any other ground,
And only such are ever captured
As pure virgins have enraptured.
No man yet of woman born
Endures the terror of his horn.
Parzifal by Wolfram von Eschenbach (exerpt)
We caught the beast called Unicorn
That knows and loves a maiden best
And falls asleep upon her breast;
We took from underneath his horn
The splendid male carbuncle stone
Sparkling against the white skull bone.
The Faerie Qeene by Edmund Spencer (exerpt)
Like as a Lion whose imperial power
A proud rebellious Unicorn defies,
T'avoid the rash assault and wrathful stour
Of his fierce foe, his to a tree applies,
And when him running in full course he spies,
He slips aside; the whiles that furious beast
His precious horn, sought of his enemies,
Strikes in the stock, nor thence can be released,
But to the mighty victor yields a bounteous feast.
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