Love

Measureless virtue! whereso yearning bodies meet

by Vidyapati c. 1352-1448

Translated by Ananda Coomaraswamy and Arun Sen (1915) · From Bangiya Padabali (trans. 1915)

Love

Sakhī:
Measureless virtue! whereso yearning bodies meet--
Now there has been indissoluble union of the twain:
How many a one essayed this way and that,
Yet none availed to put the twain asunder!

Never any household in the wicked world
Has seen such love as this, a very fount of milk!
If one should fetch it to the fire
And stir the milk to separate the water,
The milk, exulting in the heat, boils over--
Goaded by separation pangs, it leaps into the fire!

If any one should pour more water in it,
Then the separation-pangs withdraw afar.
Avows Vidyāpati: Love is such,
And such the love of Rādhā-Mādhava.

✦ ✦ ✦

Reunion after Wilfulness, LXXIX

MLA

Vidyapati. “Measureless virtue! whereso yearning bodies meet.” Translated by Ananda Coomaraswamy and Arun Sen. Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/vidyapati/78/.

Chicago

Vidyapati. “Measureless virtue! whereso yearning bodies meet.” Translated by Ananda Coomaraswamy and Arun Sen. Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/vidyapati/78/.

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