• bhītāḥ — afraid
  Fear in Vraja is always context-dependent: the residents fear for Kṛṣṇa or are made to fear by demons sent against Him. They never fear samsāra in the abstract — their bhāva is too concrete for that.
• kṛṣṇa kṛṣṇa iti — crying, 'Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa'
  The doubled name is itself the verse's centerpiece. For Gauḍīyas this is the proto-form of harināma — uncalculated, repeated, emerging directly from love and need.
• govindam — Govinda, Lord of the cows
  Go (cow, also senses, also earth) + vinda (one who finds, protects, pleases). Of all His names this one is invoked by the residents because the threat is to the cows; bhakti chooses Kṛṣṇa's name by the rasa of the moment.
• śaraṇam — shelter, refuge
  Śaraṇa-gati — taking shelter — is the doorway of bhakti. Here the whole village does it spontaneously; in Bhagavad-gītā 18.66 Kṛṣṇa will ask for the same thing explicitly. Vraja does without asking.

When the herd is spooked, every cow runs in its own direction; only the cowherds know to run toward the cowherd. Vraja's whole spiritual instinct in one line: when terror comes, the name 'Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa' is already on the tongue before the mind has chosen it.