"
[Footnote 1: necessity.]
Ganymede, overhearing all these passions of Montanus, could not brook
the cruelty of Phoebe, but starting from behind the bush said:
"And if, damsel, you fled from me, I would transform you as Daphne to
a bay, and then in contempt trample your branches under my feet."
Phoebe at this sudden reply was amazed, especially when she saw so
fair a swain as Ganymede; blushing therefore, she would have been
gone, but that he held her by the hand, and prosecuted his reply thus:
"What, shepherdess, so fair and so cruel? Disdain beseems not
cottages, nor coyness maids; for either they be condemned to be too
proud, or too froward. Take heed, fair nymph, that in despising love,
you be not overreached with love, and in shaking off all, shape
yourself to your own shadow, and so with Narcissus prove passionate
and yet unpitied. Oft have I heard, and sometimes have I seen, high
disdain turned to hot desires. Because thou art beautiful be not so
coy: as there is nothing more fair, so there is nothing more fading;
as momentary as the shadows which grows from a cloudy sun. Such, my
fair shepherdess, as disdain in youth desire in age, and then are they
hated in the winter, that might have been loved in the prime.
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