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Begin in the green heart of Vṛndāvana, where the afternoon hangs golden and a river of fragrance moves slow through the trees. Sweet Rādhā and sweet Mādhava have come to wander the bowers together, and with Them walk the laughing Madhumaṅgala, gentle Lalitā, bright Viśākhā. The forest is no mere backdrop to Their love; it is a household awake and serving. Vṛndā-devī, the sylvan goddess who reads the unspoken wishes of the Divine Couple, moves through the grove and wakes the flowers and vines as one wakes sleeping children. Rūpa Gosvāmī sets her very words down in the Vidagdha-Mādhava, that she calls out: Smile softly, O mādhavī. Show your laughter, O jasmine. Bloom up brightly, O roses. Shake off your drowsiness, O golden yūthikā. Be glad, O lotuses. Show your beauty, O clove-vines. Awaken, all of you, and kindle in Rādhā and Hari the longing to sport here among you.

And the grove obeys. Petals unfurl; the bees come reeling on the scent of honey; the peacocks lift their tails and dance; the cuckoos and the small birds flood the air with song; the deer drift in and lend their soft beauty; and every creature of the wood brims with ecstasy. So Kṛṣṇa Himself praises the forest, as Rūpa Gosvāmī gives His words: O sweet-voiced Rādhe, the trees of Vṛndāvana and their vine-wives are like householders who serve their guests the bees, pouring out honey to them; the birds and the beasts lay down their old enmities and play freely together. Who would not grow happy in Vṛndā's forest? It is no wilderness; it is a home.

Yet He cannot praise the grove without praising Her, and so the forest becomes only a mirror held up to Her loveliness. With Your playful glance, O Rādhe, You shame the soft eyes of the does. With Your supple body You put the vines themselves to shame. With Your voice You embarrass the cuckoo's song. With the dark fall of Your hair You make the peacocks ashamed of their spread tails. O Rādhe, what is the beauty of this whole forest standing before You? It is nothing. The grove was only ever a way of speaking about Her.

Now Vṛndā-devī places into Kṛṣṇa's hands two white play-lotuses and two red lotuses for the ears, and with His own fingers He decorates Rādhikā's ears with the red blossoms. Watch closely, O heart, for the whole verse turns on what happens next. Hidden inside one of His play-lotuses there is a bee, and it lifts away, drawn by the sweetness of Her face and the perfume of the red lotuses at Her ears, and it darts toward Her. She startles. Her vine-soft arms fly up; She flutters; and in fear She flings Herself against Kṛṣṇa and clings to Him, seeking shelter in His very breast. Then Madhumaṅgala, full of mischief, chases the bee off and calls out: O Rādhe, Madhusūdana is gone now. You will not see Him again.

He means the bee, for madhu-sūdana can name a honey-loving creature. But hear the word as Her love hears it. To Her, Madhusūdana is Kṛṣṇa, the slayer of the demon Madhu, the very One whose chest She is pressed against this instant. And so a strange and tender catastrophe breaks open in Her heart. She believes Her Beloved has gone. Even with Her arms around Him, even with His warmth beneath Her cheek, She begins to grieve as one bereft, and She laments aloud, as Rūpa Gosvāmī records it: Alas, have the cows cried out for help, caught in some forest-fire, and so He has run to them? Or has He found some fault in Me? Has some other gopī called Him secretly away? Why else would My lotus-eyed One leave Me so suddenly here in the wood?

This is the marvel the tradition names prema-vaicittya, the ecstasy in which love is so overwhelming that the lover dreads separation from the beloved even while embracing Him; the same wonder is unfolded at length in the purport of verse 47. Śrī Rādhā is the bottomless ocean of pure loving pastimes, and from that ocean rise endless waves of ecstasy, each more astonishing than the last; this is one of them. And Kṛṣṇa, when He sees it, is struck dumb with wonder. So far from breaking Her sweet illusion, He secretly forbids everyone in the grove to undeceive Her. Hush, all of you; say nothing; let Her think Me gone a little longer, that I may stand here and behold this impossible flower of Her love for Me, blooming out of a fear that has no ground except the depth of Her own heart.

And She, believing Him gone, mourns the small lost pleasures of the play not yet begun. Again Rūpa Gosvāmī gives Her words: Alas, He could not yet weave the spring mādhavī blossoms into My hair; I could not yet string the campaka garland to lay against His chest; we did not yet beat one another with jasmine flowers in our laughing mock-battle. And now, at the very beginning of our forest-festival, this forest-fire of separation has broken out. See how exquisite this grief is, how it is made wholly of love and not at all of fact. He is here. He has not stirred. The fire is only the disguise that Her own boundless tenderness has put on.

This is the wonder that makes Mādhava Himself, and the sakhīs who are dearer to Her than millions of lives, fall to worship the lotuses of Her feet. When such waves of prema-rasa rise in Her, there is nothing left to offer Her but worship, and no place to offer it but the secret altar of the heart. Whoever has so much as felt one of these astonishing waves can only bow; for there is no other ingredient with which She can be worshipped. Only the heart will do. So this is the suṣamā, the sweetness of Her feet, of which the verse sings: feet before which Her millions of heart-friends wave the ārati of their whole lives like lamps lifted in the dark, and before which Mādhava too performs nīrājana. The Rādhāvallabha singers make this last point burn brighter still, that Kṛṣṇa waves the ārati of Her feet with His own koṭi-koṭi rows of life-breaths; not with a lamp held in the hand, but with the very breath of His life, line upon countless line.

Then the tide turns gently back. Her prema-vaicittya softens and subsides; She lifts Her eyes and sees Him standing before Her once more, exactly where He has been all along. The fire of separation is quenched in an instant. But Śyāma is not the same; He is enchanted still by what He has just witnessed. And now everyone in the grove sees Her transfigured, each according to the love they carry. To Śyāma She is the very form of sweetness. To the sakhīs She is the form of sweetness and tender affection. To the humble maidservants She is the form of affection, mercy, and sweetness all at once, the form that stoops lowest toward the lowliest. Each loving eye drinks the measure it is able to hold, and none drinks Her dry.

And so this servant, standing far off at the edge of the grove, can only pray with the whole of his trembling heart. This is the sevā-yācanā, the begging for service, that the verse is named for. O Prāṇeśvarī, O single ocean of pure-love play, O form of incomparable mercy whose feet Mādhava Himself adores: when, when will You turn toward this nothing of a soul and pour the deep, fathomless, deathless nectar of Your service over my head like the waters of a coronation? Not to look on You from afar, not to grasp at Your sweetness, but only to be made Yours, sprinkled and soaked and anointed into the lowest rank of those who serve You forever. When, O Rādhe, when?