No More Learning

You know they both served King Uther, and just a little
while ago when Bleys died he sent for me. He said he had something to
tell me that I must know before he left the world. He said that they
two, Merlin and he, sat beside the bed of King Uther on the night when
the king passed away, moaning and wailing because he left no heir to his
throne. After the king's death as Merlin and Bleys walked out from the
castle walls into the dismal misty night, they saw a wonderful
fairy-ship shaped like a winged dragon sailing the heavens, with shining
people collected on its decks; but in the twinkling of an eye the ship
was gone.

"Then Merlin and Bleys passed down into the cove by the seashore to
watch the billows, one after the other, as they lapped up against the
beach. And as they looked at last a great wave gathered up one-half of
the ocean and came full of voices, slowly rising and plunging, roaring
all the while. Then all the wave was in a flame; and down in the wave
and in the flame they saw lying a naked babe that was carried by the
water to Merlin's very feet.

"'The king! ' cried Merlin. 'Here's an heir for Uther. '

"Then as old Merlin spoke the fringe of that terrible great flaming
breaker lashed at him as he held up the baby; it rose up round him in a
mantle of fire so that he and the child were clothed in fire. Then
suddenly there was a calm, the stars looked out and the sky was open.

"'And this same child,' Bleys whispered to me, 'is the young king who
reigns. And I could not die in peace unless the story had been told. '
Then Bleys passed away into the land where nobody can question him.
"So I came to Merlin to ask him whether that was all true about the
shining dragon-ship and the tiny bare baby floating down from heaven
over on the glory of the seas; but Merlin just laughed, as he always
does, and answered me in the riddles of the old song, this way:

"'Rain, rain and sun! a rainbow in the sky!
A young man will be wiser by and by;
An old man's wit may wander ere he die.
Rain, rain and sun! a rainbow on the lea!
And truth is this to me and that to thee;
And truth or clothed or naked let it be.
Rain, sun and rain! and the free blossom blows;
Sun, rain and sun! and where is he who knows.
From the great deep to the great deep he goes! '

"It vexed me dreadfully to have Merlin be so tantalizing; but you must
not be afraid, king, to give your only child Guinevere to this King
Arthur. For great poets will sing of his brave deeds in long years after
this; and Merlin has said, and not joking, either, that even although
Arthur's enemies may wound him in battle he will never, never die, but
will only pass away for a time, for a little while, and then will come
to us again. And Merlin says too, that sometime Arthur is going to
trample all the heathen kings under his feet until all the nations and
all the men will call him their king. "

It pleased Leodogran tremendously to hear what the Queen of Orkney told
him of Arthur, and when she had ended he lay thinking over it all, still
puzzled as to whether he should say "yes" or "no" to the ambassadors
whom Arthur had sent. As he lay buried in his thoughts he grew very,
very drowsy and dreamy, and at last, he fell asleep. And while he slept
he saw a wonderful vision in a dream.