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Begin in the late afternoon of a Vraja day, in a grove where the air still holds the day's warmth and the sweetness of crushed blossoms. Rūpa Gosvāmī sets the scene for us in the sixth act of his Vidagdha-Mādhava, where He unfolds the hide-and-seek of Śrī-Śrī Rādhā-Mādhava. All afternoon They have been losing and finding each other among the Saptaparṇa trees, slipping behind trunks, holding their breath, until the dark Lord can bear these small separations no longer. He comes close. He tells Her there is no more need for this game that only teaches Their two hearts the taste of parting, that They should rest now in this Saptaparṇa-grove beautified by fragrant flowers. And He reaches for Her hand and says: come, let us take some rest in this nearby kuñja.

Watch what happens in the instant He takes that hand. A tremor of love runs through Her whole body, and Her carefully bound braid, Her dhammilla, loosens just slightly, the way a vine sways when the wind first touches it. The garland of fresh jasmines that some loving kiṅkarī wound into Her hair an hour ago slips a little, almost falling. O the beauty of that small disorder. The decoration the maidservant arranged with such care is now being rearranged by rasa itself, by the touch of prema; and Kṛṣṇa, who is rasa-rāja, the very king of rasa, is enchanted in a rasika way to watch His own sweetness redo what the maidservant's hands had done. Nothing fixed, nothing perfect, stays perfect in love. The loosened braid is lovelier than the bound one.

Now look at Her face in that moment. It blazes. Śyāma gazes and gazes and can find nothing in all creation to hold up beside it. He thinks only, how beautiful is the luster of Your face. Millions of autumn moons rise in His mind and are not enough, for not one of them carries the soothing nectar that pours from Her cheeks. He has no word for it. Only the kiṅkarī who knows the secret of His heart dares to put it into sound, and even she can only gesture: O You whose face defeats millions of autumn moons, "śārada-candra-koṭi-vadane." We say "millions" not as a number but as a surrender, the way the tongue gives up and simply spreads its hands.

And the bees come. They have caught the jasmine on the wind, and they rise in restless, maddened hosts toward Her braid, "āmodaiḥ vikalīkṛta-ali-paṭale": the whole row of them agitated, drunk before they have even arrived. But see the deeper secret the maidservant smiles at: the bees are not finally drawn by the jasmine at all. They are drawn even more to that lotus-fragrance of Her face which no flower can teach, and the garland is only the doorway through which they came. So it always is. The ornament is the pretext; the Beloved is the intoxication.

Then Śyāma's longing thickens. Seeing Her braid loosened, Her garland trembling, Her face pouring moonlight, He wants Her near again, and He catches the edge of Her silken sārī to drag Her toward the nearby kuñja. And here is the sweetness the tradition treasures above all: She resists. She pulls the end of the cloth back out of His hands. O Rādhe, how lovely is this refusing. It is not coldness; it is the very art of love, the holding-back that makes the heart of the rasika Lord overflow. The maidservant cries out to Her then, "paṭṭa-dukūla-vāsini": O Girl who wears the two-piece silken sārī, naming the very cloth that has become the tender battleground between Them. And the tradition tells us plainly, in the words of the Caitanya-caritāmṛta, "saṅgama hoite sukha pāy koṭi guṇa": that this unwilling, half-turning, reluctant mood gives Śyāma millions of times more joy than direct union ever could.

When the scarf is tugged away and the body turns, the neck is bared. O the conch-smooth throat, "kambu-kaṇṭhi," and upon it the Graiveya-necklace catching the slanting light and blazing, "graiveya-ujjvala." The manjarī's ecstasy can hold nothing more; she calls out to that bright-necklaced, conch-throated Girl, and to the soft creeper-arms where the bangles slide and ring as She moves to draw Her cloth back, "mṛdu-dor-vallī calat-kaṅkaṇe." Every gesture of the small struggle becomes music. The arms are vines, tender beyond telling, and the bangles upon them chime with each motion.

At last, undone by such matchless sweetness, Śyāma draws Her into the nearby kuñja, and union comes. The maidservant does not follow inside; that is not her place. She makes her eyes successful from outside, glimpsing the sweet pastimes through the latticed windows of the arbour, through the small openings in the woven leaves. And from within, from Her lotus feet, the anklebells sing, "raṇat-mañjīra," jingling, and that sound traveling out through the lattice is the fulfillment of the maidservant's ears. She came for nothing of her own. To see a little, to hear a little, to have her eyes and ears made fruitful by the very edge of Their joy, is her whole heaven.

So the prayer rises, head to foot, the way a worshipper's eyes climb a deity from the feet upward and pour down again from the face: the moon-defeating face, the jasmine braid alive with maddened bees, the blazing Graiveya-necklace on the conch-throat, the vine-arms ringing with bangles, the silken two-piece dress, the singing anklets on the lotus feet. And out of the longing of the one who watches from outside the lattice comes the cry that is the whole verse, the cry the tradition gives in Prabodhānanda's own voice, "prabodhānandera ei āśā pūrṇa koro": O Rādhe, when, when will I see this wondrous form of Yours? Fill my eyes. Fulfill the desire of this servant by letting this adbhuta beauty, this wonder past all comparison, stand before me even once.