Phoebe, fired with the uncouth[1] flame of love, returned to her father's house, so galled with restless passions, as now she began to acknowledge, that as there was no flower so fresh but might be parched with the sun, no tree so strong but might be shaken with a storm, so there was no thought so chaste, but time armed with love could make amorous; for she that held Diana for the goddess of her devotion, was now fain to fly to the altar of Venus, as suppliant now with prayers, as she was forward before with disdain. As she lay in her bed, she called to mind the several beauties of young Ganymede; first his locks, which being amber-hued, passeth the wreath that Phoebus puts on to make his front glorious; his brow of ivory was like the seat where love and majesty sits enthroned to enchain fancy; his eyes as bright as the burnishing of the heaven, darting forth frowns with disdain and smiles with favor, lightning such looks as would inflame desire, were she wrapped in the circle of the frozen zone; in his cheeks the vermilion teinture of the rose flourished upon natural alabaster, the blush of the morn and Luna's silver show were so lively portrayed, that the Troyan that fills out wine to Jupiter was not half so beautiful; his face was full of pleasance, and all the rest of his lineaments proportioned with such excellence, as Phoebe was fettered in the sweetness of his feature. The idea of these perfections tumbling in her mind made the poor shepherdess so perplexed, as feeling a pleasure tempered with intolerable pains, and yet a disquiet mixed with a content, she rather wished to die than to live in this amorous anguish. But wishing is little worth in such extremes, and therefore was she forced to pine in her malady, without any salve for her sorrows. Reveal it she durst not, as daring in such matters to make none her secretary;[2] and to conceal it, why, it doubled her grief; for as fire suppressed grows to the greater flame, and the current stopped to the more violent stream, so love smothered wrings the heart with the deeper passions. [Footnote 1: unknown, unaccustomed.] [Footnote 2: confidante.] Perplexed thus with sundry agonies, her food began to fail, and the disquiet of her mind began to work a distemperature of her body, that, to be short, Phoebe fell extreme sick, and so sick as there was almost left no recovery of health. Her father, seeing his fair Phoebe thus distressed, sent for his friends, who sought by medicine to cure, and by counsel to pacify, but all in vain; for although her body was feeble through long fasting, yet she did _magis aegrotare animo quam corpore_. Which her friends perceived and sorrowed at, but salve it they could not.