શ્રી વેઙ્કટેશ તૂણકમ્ (Rhythmic Balaji Stotra)

A short hymn in the tūṇaka metre, which is what its title names, and the metre is the point: a long trochaic line that runs in a hard regular beat and invites chains of internal rhyme, so the verses move at speed. It begins at the soles of the feet and the marks read there — the thunderbolt, the conch, the arrow and the bow — then the ten thousand red rays streaming from them. What follows is a rapid accumulation rather than a description: enchanter of the five-arrowed one, cause of Brahmā's birth, bright in golden cloth, dark like a moving raincloud, his curls stirring like a swarm of bees, his brow a little raised, and the god called a deceiver in the same breath. Later verses give the conch-marked throat, the moon-lovely face, the chest marked with saffron, and the print of Indirā's foot upon it.