śrī maṅgalacaṇḍikā stotram

A hymn to Mangala Chandika, and its meditation is unusual for a Chandika in having nothing fierce in it at all. She is sixteen years old, lovely, of a youth that does not move on; soft-limbed and captivating; the colour of a white champak flower and as bright as a crore of moons; her cloth purified by fire and her ornaments of jewels; her braid heavy and dressed with a garland of jasmine; her lips like the bimba fruit, her face like an autumn lotus, her eyes blue lotuses, and her face made pleasant by a slight smile. Only at the end does it say what she is for, and it does it in a single image rather than a list — in the terrible ocean of the world she is the boat, and it is that form of her the hymn takes refuge in.