Verse 1

¹Hearing the Bhagavan's words, so finely made, the cowherd women let go the burning that separation had raised in them, their longing filled by the touch of his body. ²There Govinda began the dance of the rasa, ringed by those jewels among women who were true to him, glad, their arms linked one into another. ³The festival of the rasa was under way, adorned with the circle of the cowherd women, Krsna the lord of yoga entering between each two of them in the middle and holding them at the neck, and each woman with him beside her. ⁴So they might have thought; and by then the sky was crowded with hundreds of chariots of the sky-dwellers, who had come with their wives, their wits carried off by eagerness.

⁵Then the kettledrums sounded and showers of flowers came down, and the lords of the gandharvas with their wives sang his spotless fame. ⁶The bangles and anklets and little bells of the women, each of them beside her beloved, made a great tumult of sound in the circle of the rasa. ⁷There the Bhagavan, Devaki's son, shone out among them as a great emerald shines set in the middle of jewels of gold.