Dragon

Quick walk out to the Post Office on Thistle Street, which was busy. Stamps for the international cards; I worked out how to get our printer to put addresses in the correct place on different sizes of card envelopes, so almost all the cards are ready to post.

Was looking for something else in a box, and came across a dragon, as one does .. 

from a Stories and Rhymes poetry pamphlet, BBC Radio for schools, autumn 1977. Artist Sue Henry. Also includes one verse from JRR Tolkien's poem The Hoard ..

There was an old dragon under grey stone;
his red eyes blinked as he lay alone.
His joy was dead and his youth spent,
he was knobbed and wrinkled, and his limbs bent
in the long years to his gold chained;
in his heart's furnace the fire waned.
To his belly's slime gems stuck thick,
silver and gold he would snuff and lick:
he knew the place of the least ring
beneath the shadow of his black wing.
Of thieves he thought on his hard bed,
and dreamed that on their flesh he fed,
their bones crushed, and their blood drank:
his ears drooped and his breath sank.
Mail-rings rang. He heard them not.
A voice echoed in his deep grot:
a young warrior with a bright sword
called him forth to defend his hoard.
His teeth were knives, and of horn his hide,
but iron tore him, and his flame died.