Verse 8

⁸With the placing of feet, with waving arms, with smiles and the play of eyebrows, with bending waists and breast-cloths astir, earrings swinging at their cheeks, their faces damp, the knots of braid and girdle slipping, Krsna's women sang of him and shone out like lightning in a ring of cloud. ⁹They sang aloud as they danced, their throats full of it, glad in love and gladdened by Krsna's touch; and all this here was covered over by their singing. ¹⁰One of them raised the notes of the scale unmixed, in tune with Mukunda, and he was pleased and honoured her: well sung, well sung. She raised that same tune again in the steady measure, and he gave her honour in plenty.

¹¹Another, worn out by the dance, caught with her arm the shoulder of the mace-bearer standing beside her, her bangles slipping and the jasmine coming loose from her hair. ¹²There she smelled that arm of Krsna laid across her shoulder, sweet as a blue lotus and smeared with sandal, and the hair rose on her body and she kissed it. ¹³One set her cheek against his cheek, a cheek lit by the flash of earrings that the dancing had set swinging, and to her he gave the betel he had been chewing. ¹⁴One who was dancing and singing, her anklets and girdle chiming, grew tired and laid on her breasts the lotus hand of the Unfallen who stood at her side, the hand that quiets.