Verse 44

³⁹This mind of mine, lord of Vaikuntha, takes no joy in your stories. It is spoiled by wrongdoing, it is bad and hard, sick with desire, hurt by gladness and grief and fear and wanting. In such a mind, how am I, poor as I am, to weigh out the way to you? ⁴⁰Unfallen one, my tongue drags me one way, never filled; the loins another; the skin, the belly, the ear from somewhere else; the nose another way; the restless eye; and somewhere the power to act. They cut me up as rival wives cut up the master of a house. ⁴¹So, looking on people fallen by their own works into the crossing-river of the world, frightened again and again of birth and death and being eaten, holding some their own and some strangers, in hate and friendship: you who go to the far shore, carry the fool over today.

⁴²Bhagavan, teacher of all, what labour is it to you to bring this man over, when you are the breaking-off of the round of birth? The favour of the great falls on fools, friend of the suffering. And what would it cost us, who serve those dear to you? ⁴³Highest one, that river so hard to cross does not shake me; my mind is sunk in the great nectar of singing your powers. What I grieve for are the fools whose minds are turned away, carrying the load for the things of the senses, for a happiness made of maya. ⁴⁴Mostly, god, the sages want their own release and go about in silence in lonely places, and do not stand by the good of others. I do not want to be released alone, leaving these wretched ones behind. For one wandering here I see no refuge but you.