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Begin with the bower. Picture a little temple woven of fresh vines in Vṛndāvana, the newest leaves still uncurling along its walls, the floor soft with fallen petals, and the soft southern breeze moving through the lattice of leaves carrying the smell of spring. The bees are humming there, the birds are chirping, the parrots are singing; the whole vernal grove seems to have arranged its music for one purpose. And within this little mandira of greenery two lights are burning. Not lamps. Not the cold, attribute-less white blank of the brahman effulgence that the philosophers chase. These are two lights that have a body, a face, a color and a will. One is molten gold; one is the blue-black of a fresh rain-cloud; and between Them flows a current that has no name except love. They are kiśora and kiśorī, forever at the dawn-edge of youth, ever-blissful, sadānanda, and They are intoxicated. Cupid himself, kandarpa, has gone to Their heads. The art of love, rati-kalā, has become a wonder-game They cannot stop, full of teasing and laughter and astonishment, rasa rising upon rasa, kautuka without end.

Hold that scene, O heart, because everything in this remembrance is measured against it. For while the Pair plays in the eternal spring of the vine-temple, the one who sings this verse is somewhere else entirely. He is on fire. He says it to himself plainly: I am burning in the terrible fire of material existence. This is no small heat. It is the great forest-fire of birth and death, of old age that bends the body and disease that wracks it, the fire in which sinners are carried down into hellish worlds, the fire that drives the soul from one form into the next without rest. What, he asks, is the means of extinguishing such a blaze? Knowledge only describes the flames. Effort only fans them. He searches, and then he remembers.

He remembers the soothing honey that trickles from Śrī Rādhikā's lotus feet, the makaranda, the flower-nectar of those soles. And here is the wonder of it: that honey is so cool, so utterly soothing, that it quenches the entire conflagration of worldly existence almost without trying. Mark the order of the gift carefully, for the tradition is precise about it. Extinguishing saṁsāra is not even the main thing the nectar does. The main gift of that honey is divine love, prema itself. The cooling of the fire is only the side-effect, the splash that lands on the burning world as the honey pours toward the lover's truer thirst.

And there is a deeper reading the tradition keeps folded inside this one. The word for existence, bhava, that burning thing, is glossed bhavantyasmād iti bhavam, "that from which beings arise," yet it need not mean only the cycle of births. It can name a far more intimate fire: the fire of separation from Śrī Rādhā Herself, viraha, which is incomparable and intolerable, more unbearable than any worldly heat, for it is the scorching of one who has tasted nearness and now stands apart. Startled by just this fire, a great servant of Rādhā cried out, and Raghunātha Dāsa Gosvāmī fixes it in the Vilāpa Kusumāñjali, that tenth lament: "O Devi Rādhe, the vine-like body of this fallen maidservant is scorching in the forest-fire of separation from You; please revive me with a nectarean, momentary glance." That is the truth hidden beneath the plain prayer. When the singer begs the honey of Their feet to cool his bhava, he is half-asking to be released from the world and half-asking, far more desperately, to be released from the agony of being far from Her. Both fires beg the same nectar.

But why must he beg at all, when the lights burn so near? Because Svāminī plays a game of hide-and-seek with those who love Her. To keep the devotee's thirst alive and ever-growing, She reveals Herself and then withdraws; one moment She stands before the inner eye, sweet and complete, and the next She is gone, the bower is empty, and the fire roars back. The Bṛhad Bhāgavatāmṛta remembers how Śrīpāda Pippalāyana, one of the nine Yogendras of Tapoloka, counseled Gopa Kumāra to behold his beloved deity Śrīman Madana Gopāla in samādhi, in mystic trance, and how that loving devotee was not satisfied with such advice: he longed to see his Lord before his external eyes too, not behind closed lids alone. So it is with the singer here. Śrī Rādhā plays before Prabodhānanda's inner eye and outer eye both, and still he is not satisfied. To see Her in trance is not enough. The loving heart wants Her before the outer eyes also, in the body, in the bower, in the breeze.

So this verse is the cry of one who has glimpsed the two lights and cannot bear that they have dimmed again. O wind of the south, you who carry the scent of those bowers, carry me a single drop. O youthful Pair, two lights of Vṛndāvana aglow in the new-vine temple, look upon this scorched and wandering creature and let one bead of that nectar fall. He does not pray, in the end, merely for peace. He prays for the honey that is Her presence, knowing that even a drop of it will reach down and quench the whole flaming world along the way.