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Picture the hour. The cows are turning home, lowing for their calves, and the village swells with the sounds of evening. This is the uttara-goṣṭha, the cow-return time, when the herd flows back toward Vraja. And here, at the heart of it, stands Kṛṣṇa, trembling, scattered, unable to gather Himself. He spins toward His friends and the names spill out of Him in a rush: "O Śrīdāma, O Subala, Vṛṣabha, Stoka-Kṛṣṇa, Arjuna, and all the rest of you, what did you see? My startled eyes could not even cross into the grove. Some goddess, some indescribable Lady whose loveliness inundates all the worlds, has stood far off, and from that distance She has stolen everything from your dearest friend."

Feel the wonder of who is speaking. All through this poem it is Kṛṣṇa who carries off every heart. His very name, Hari, means the thief, the one who robs the world of its mind with His beauty and His sweetness. He attracts even Lakṣmī down from Vaikuṇṭha; the Bhāgavata sings, "vismāpanaṁ svasya ca": He astonishes even Himself with His own beauty. And yet here, O wonder of wonders, the thief Himself has been robbed. A single drop of Her luster is enough to drown His heart; the full flood drowns every world. She has taken from Him not only His mind, but His intelligence, His heart, His very life. Who then can measure the power of Her love, Her beauty, Her sweetness? This is what is hidden in that small word He keeps repeating: dūrāt, from afar. Not near, not in His arms, not even within reach of His eyes, but from afar She has unmade Him.

Notice how undone He truly is. He blurts His secret out to the boys, and in His confusion He calls upon Śrīdāma, who is none other than Rādhā's own brother, who is of all people not meant to know of this intimate love between his sister and his dearest friend. The tradition lingers tenderly on this slip. Viśvanātha Cakravartī tells in the Kṛṣṇa-Bhāvanāmṛta how, when the cows neared the village and began to moo and run for their calves, Balarāma and Śrīdāma and the other boys hurried on ahead into the town, on the pretext of rescuing their mothers from an ocean of lamentation, but truly because they did not wish to stay beside Kṛṣṇa as He met His beloved in the afternoon. So Śrīdāma had already gone in. Only Subala and the more intimate friends remained. Which means Kṛṣṇa is calling a name to a friend who is no longer there: He names Śrīdāma by sheer mistake, so completely has his mind been carried off. There is no clearer measure of His helplessness than that.

Hear the words He chooses, for each one is a window. He says cakita, startled, because bashful Rādhikā, even in the midst of everyone, has cast Him one trembling, startled glance, and that glance has done all this. Rūpa and the tradition fix the weight of such a glance in the Govinda-Līlāmṛta: "śrī rādhikāpāṅga vilokaneṣuṇā," that one arrow-like sidelong look of Śrī Rādhikā agitates Kṛṣṇa's heart more than a whole quiver of glances loosed by all the other gopīs together. One look from Her, and the conqueror of all hearts is conquered. And He says devī, goddess, and the Caitanya-caritāmṛta unfolds the word for us: "devī kohe dyotamanā paramā sundarī," devī means the effulgent one, the most beautiful of all. He is not naming a deity of the woods; She is not even the presiding goddess of the kuñja. And that is the marvel He cannot get past.

For this is the deepest turn of the verse, held in His phrase naiva kuñje, not only in the grove. Kṛṣṇa is well used to being astonished by Her in the secret bowers of Vraja; that is where their love unfolds, that is where He expects to lose Himself. But now He has seen Her standing far away upon the high moon-tower of King Vṛṣabhānu, Her father's palace, and even there, even at that distance, with no bower to enclose them, She has undone Him utterly. "This is not the kuñja," He marvels, "who is it that can astonish Me even here, appearing before Me from so far?" So when He cries that She floods all the worlds with Her elegance, He means it as the bewildered praise of a man drowning. She is like the Gaṅgā, like the Yamunā, a river of beauty in flood; the closing songs of the tradition call Her acalā capalā gaurī, the steady-yet-restless golden one, navīnā nāgarī bhānu-sutā, the ever-fresh young heroine, the daughter of Vṛṣabhānu, Hari-Priyā Vinodinī Rāī, the delight of the eyes of Nāgara Kṛṣṇa, whose very form has stolen His mind.

And mark who is telling us all this. The whole confession reaches us through a maidservant, who carried it back and laid it at the feet of her Svāminī, Rādhā, the One who maddens Kṛṣṇa with a single glance. So even Kṛṣṇa's helplessness becomes, in the end, an offering of praise to Her, sung by a serving girl into Her ear. Prabodhānanda himself confesses that not even in Sarasvatī's whole storehouse of words are there words enough for this; "tad rasikaika vedyaḥ," only the rasika devotees, only those tender enough to taste it, will ever truly know.