Verse 1

¹Once, setting his mind on a meal in the wood, Hari got up at daybreak from Vraja and woke his friends the calf-herds with the fine sound of his horn, and went out with the calves going before him. ²Along with him the boys went out in their thousands, full of affection, with their lunch bags and sticks and horns and flutes, driving before each of them his own calves, more than a thousand apiece, and they went out gladly. ³Making one herd of their own calves together with Krsna's, which were past counting, they pastured them and played here and there with the games of children. ⁴Though they were already decked with glass beads and gunja berries and jewels and gold, they decked themselves further with fruit and young shoots and clusters and flowers and feathers and coloured earth.

⁵They stole one another's lunch bags and the rest, and when the owner found out they threw them far off; and those standing over there threw them further still, and gave them back laughing. ⁶If Krsna went off any distance to look at the beauty of the wood, they would run after him, I first, I first, and touch him, and take delight in it.