śrīcaṇḍikāstutiḥ (durgāprasādadvivedīviracitā)

Eight verses by Durgaprasada Dvivedi for a shrine on the bank of the Gomati, where the Goddess is called Bhayakhandika, the breaker of fear. The place is set down as carefully as she is: a hermitage in a lonely bend of the river, a lake before it, her seat at the root of a nim tree on a high broad bank, a triangular pool, birds in the creeper-bound trees, the air full of falling flowers. The second verse says outright that she has no built shrine and no particular house — the river passing makes her seat. The fifth is composed on a single verbal ending, so that making valour fierce, breaking calamity, adorning speech, punishing the arrogant and holding heaven and earth all chime against her name. Though her body exceeds the universe, the last verse says, she walks that riverbank.