Verse 19

¹⁹From some way off they made out Krsna inside the pool, wrapped round by the coils of the serpent and making no move at the water's edge, and the cowherds all about with their minds gone, and the cattle crying out; and in their pain they came to the deepest wretchedness. ²⁰The cowherd women, their minds bound in love to the endless Bhagavan, remembering his friendship, his smiling, his looks and his words, burned with a great pain now that their most beloved was seized by the snake, and saw the three worlds emptied, with their beloved taken out of them. ²¹They took hold of Krsna's mother, who was going in after her child, and in the same pain held her and let their sorrow run; and they went on telling the stories that are dear in Vraja, their eyes fixed on Krsna's face, looking like dead things.

²²Seeing Nanda and the rest, whose breath was Krsna, going down into that pool, the Bhagavan Rama, who knew Krsna's power, held them back. ²³So, seeing his own Gokula, which had no other going, in the deepest pain for his sake, with its women and its children, and knowing it, and keeping to the way of a mortal, he stayed a moment and then rose out of the serpent's hold.