śrī harināmāṣṭakam

Eight verses by the ascetic Brahmananda, and the one addressed in them is not the Lord but the reciter's own tongue. Each verse is a chain of vocatives — Keshava, Achyuta, Mukunda, wheel-in-hand, Govinda, Madhava, Janardana, foe of the demons, Narayana, lord of the immortals, dweller in the three worlds — and each turns aside from them at the last line to say: tongue, go on repeating these sweet syllables. The names are chosen for their sound as much as for their sense, so that the eight verses work through the whole familiar stock without using one twice, while the closing instruction never varies. It is a hymn about the act of reciting rather than about what is recited.