Madhurashtakam — opening verse

The word madhura appears eight times in four padas and the hymn goes on doing this for eight verses. That is the whole device, and it is not a poverty of vocabulary — it is a refusal to rank. A poem that found different adjectives for the lip, the eyes and the walk would be comparing them; repeating one word insists there is nothing to choose between. The turn is in the last pada. madhurādhipati, 'lord of sweetness', is also a pun on Mathura — the lord of Mathura — so the final line names Krishna by place and by quality in the same compound, and then says akhilaṃ, 'everything', which absorbs the seven items just listed and everything left unlisted. Vallabhacharya founded the Pushtimarg, and the emphasis here on Krishna's form rather than his acts is characteristic of that tradition.