Love stood amazed at sweet Beauty’s pain: un ayre della raccolta The Third and Last Booke of Songs or Aires, pubblicata nel 1603. La partitura consultata presenta quattro linee vocali autonome (cantus/soprano, altus/contralto, tenor e bassus) con liuto; la registrazione del Consort of Musicke documenta una realizzazione estesa del brano. Il testo in sei strofe personifica Amore davanti alla morte della Bellezza: dallo smarrimento e dal rimprovero agli dèi passa alla disperazione, fino alla metamorfosi in Fenice. Non è attestato un anno preciso di composizione. Il range 1563–1603 è solo un limite biografico convenzionale (nascita circa 1563) e la prima pubblicazione nota; non va inteso come datazione puntuale dell’opera.
Anonimo (attribuzione non accertata) · Testo integrale in sei strofe secondo la partitura
1. Love stood amazed at sweet Beauty’s pain:
Love would have said that all was but vain,
And gods but half divine.
But when Love saw that Beauty would die,
He, all aghast, to heavens did cry:
“O gods, what wrong is mine!”
2. Then his tears, bred in thoughts of salt brine,
Fell from his eyes like rain in sunshine,
Expell’d by rage of fire.
Yet in such wise as anguish affords,
He did express in these his last words
His infinite desire.
3. Are you fled, fair? Where are now those eyes,
Eyes but too fair, envied by the skies?
You angry gods do know.
With guiltless blood your sceptres you stain;
On poor true hearts like tyrants you reign.
Unjust! Unjust! Why do you so?
4. Are you false gods? Why then do you reign?
Are you just gods? Why then have you slain
The life of Love on earth?
Beauty, now thy face lives in the skies.
Beauty, now let me live in thine eyes,
Where bliss felt never, never death.
5. Then from high rock, the rock of despair,
He falls, in hope to smother in the air,
Or else on stones to burst;
Or on cold waves to spend his last breath,
Or his strange life to end by strange death;
But Fate forbade, forbade the worst.
6. With pity moved, the gods then change Love
To Phoenix shape, yet cannot remove
His wonted property.
He loves the sun because it is fair;
Sleep he neglects, he lives but by air,
And would, but cannot, cannot die.
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