The flowers do fade, and wanton fields To wayward Winter reckoning yields; A honey tongue, a heart of gall, Is fancy’s Spring, but sorrow’s fall. Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses, Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies, Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten, In folly ripe, in reason rotten. Thy belt of straw, and ivy buds, Thy coral clasps and amber studs, All these in me no means can move, To come to thee and be thy love. But could youth last, and love still breed, Had joys no date, nor age no need, Then these delights my mind might move, To live with thee and be thy love. Finis. Ignoto. The editor of the third edition of the “Helicon” 1812, says in regard to “Ignoto:” “This signature appears to have been generally, though not exclusively, subscribed to the pieces of Sir Walter Raleigh. It is also subscribed to one piece since appropriated to Shakspere, [No. xviii,] and to one Which, according to Ellis, belongs to Richard Barnfield [No. xxi.] The celebrated answer to Marlowe’s, ’Come live with me,’ here subscribed _Ignoto_, is given expressly to Raleigh by Isaac Walton in his ‘Complete Angler,’ first published in 1653.” [36] What could Walton know about it fifty years after the publication of the song and answer as above? On such worthless testimony the Nymph’s Answer is credited to Raleigh. And we have in the “Encyclopedia of Poetry,” 1873, first the song by Marlowe, “_about_ 1590,” and then the Nymph’s Reply by Raleigh “_about_ 1610.” Strange that the Nymph should wait _about_ twenty years to reply, and should then repeat the lines credited to Shakspere in 1599 and to “Ignoto” in 1600! The song perhaps existed before the death of Marlowe in 1593, but was probably composed by “Ignoto,” who also wrote “The Nymph’s Reply” and numerous other poetical pieces that were published in the “Helicon” in 1600. “Ignoto” was undoubtedly a concealed poet. Marlowe, Raleigh and Barnfield were not. As early as January 1590, if not a little sooner, “Ignoto” contributed to Spenser’s first publication of the “Faery Queen” the following lines: “To look upon a work of rare devise The which a workman setteth out to view, And not to yield it the deserved prize That unto such a workmanship is due, Doth either prove the judgment to be naught, Or else doth show a mind with envy fraught. “To labor to commend a piece of work Which no man goes about to discommend, Would raise a jealous doubt that there did lurk Some secret doubt whereto the praise did tend: For when men know the goodness of the wine ’Tis needless for the host to have a sign.