Spring in the woods by the Yamuna. Radha waits, and her friend tells her Krishna is dancing with the other cowherd women. Radha goes away hurt and will not come; Krishna, left alone, remembers her and is sorry. The friend goes between them, describing to each the other's longing. At last Krishna comes to Radha, and when she turns from him he begs, and asks her to set her tender foot on his head; she relents, and the poem ends in their union.
Edwin Arnold, The Indian Song of Songs (1875), in Indian Poetry (Project Gutenberg 25965); Jayadeva (Encyclopaedia Britannica); Gita Govinda (Wikipedia)
Devotees tell that when Jayadeva reached the verse in which Krishna asks Radha to set her foot on his head, he could not bring himself to write that God would say it. He put down the leaf and went to bathe. Krishna came in Jayadeva's form, wrote the line, and ate the meal his wife Padmavati had cooked; when the poet returned he found the verse written and knew who had been there.
Who Will Understand This (Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math); Jayadeva (Wikipedia)
Sources: Edwin Arnold, The Indian Song of Songs (1875), in Indian Poetry (Project Gutenberg 25965); Jayadeva (Encyclopaedia Britannica); Gita Govinda (Wikipedia); Who Will Understand This (Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math); Jayadeva (Wikipedia)
Vrishabhanu finds a baby girl on a lotus in the Yamuna at Raval; she keeps her eyes shut until the infant Krishna is brought before her; the Brahma Vaivarta Purana adds that she came from Krishna's own left side in Goloka and was born on earth through a curse.
Krishna, now in Mathura, sends Uddhava to console the women of Vraja with talk of the formless god; one of them, speaking to a bee, mocks the messenger; the Bhagavata never names her but commentators and poets made her Radha, and Surdas's Bhramar Geet turns the scene into the gopis' refusal of Uddhava's teaching.
How the Shakta Puranas tell Saraswati's birth: a white daughter from the tongue of the Goddess (or Radha's lips, or Krishna's mouth), with a veena and a book, whom Krishna sends to Vaikuntha as Narayana's wife, and whom he worships himself on the fifth day of Magha.
Krishna asks Yashoda why Radha is fair and he is dark, and she tells him to go and colour Radha's face. He and his friends raid Barsana with colour and the women drive them off with sticks; the next day the women of Barsana raid Nandgaon. The Garga Samhita has the gopis come to Nanda's house to play Holi with Krishna.
The Asura Pralamba joins the cowherd boys' game disguised as one of them, loses to Balarama and has to carry him, and runs off with him growing huge; in the Vishnu Purana Krishna reminds Balarama of his own nature, in the Bhagavata he remembers alone; he kills the demon.
Balarama, teacher of the mace to both Bhima and Duryodhana, refuses to fight in the Kurukshetra war and goes on pilgrimage; he returns for the final duel, and when Bhima strikes below the navel he rushes at him with his plough until Krishna holds him back, then leaves for Dwaraka. In the Bhagavata he tries to stop the duel and fails.
King Yadu meets a young wandering sage who is happy and fearless, and asks who taught him; the sage names twenty-four teachers, the earth, the wind, a pigeon, a python, a moth, a courtesan named Pingala, a girl's bangles and a spider among them; tradition calls him Dattatreya.
The boy Krishna leaps into the Yamuna pool poisoned by the serpent Kaliya, is bound in his coils while Vrindavan weeps on the bank, then dances on his hoods until the serpent's wives beg for his life, and sends him back to the sea.