Dunbar's chief allegorical poems are "The Goldyn Targe" and "The Thrissil and the Rois". The motif of the former is the poet's futile endeavour, in a dream, to ward off Dame Beauty's arrows by Reason's "scheld of gold." When wounded and made prisoner, he discovers the true beauty of the lady: when she leaves him, he is handed over to Heaviness. The noise of the ship's guns, as the company sails off, wakes the poet to the real pleasures of a May morning. Dunbar works on the same theme in a shorter poem, known as "Beauty and the Prisoner". The "Thrissil and the Rois" is a in honour of King James and Queen Margaret.