Else not to be told
For silver or gold.
So advises Master Will. Lauson in the Secrets of Angling, which was published in 1653; the ingredients (or ingrediments as I used to say when I was a child) of his "gum of life" being Cocculus Juliæ, Assafoetida, Honey, and Wheat-flour. The "that which kills the oak," I suppose, is ivy. But it looks as if there may have been a wink in his eye—to welcome the green in his reader's.
Here, on the same theme, are a few lines from a poem by Mr. Robert Bridges:
... Sometimes an angler comes, and drops his hook
Within its hidden depths, and 'gainst a tree
Leaning his rod, reads in some pleasant book,
Forgetting soon his pride of fishery,
And dreams, or falls asleep,
While curious fishes peep