含淚辭別 The Dragon Departs at Dusk
龍王聞言，拜辭含淚而去。不覺紅日西沉，太陰星上。但見：龙王闻言，拜辞含泪而去。不觉红日西沉，太阴星上。但见：
逐句解 Line by line
Hearing this, the Dragon King bowed his farewell and departed in tears. Before he knew it, the red sun had sunk in the west and the moon-star had risen. There was to be seen:
拜辭 is 'to take leave with a bow'; 太陰星 ('the great-yin star') is the moon. 但見 ('there was to be seen') introduces the descriptive lyric of nightfall.
Mist congeals, the hills turn purple, and the homing crows are weary; travelers on the long road put up at the wayside inns.
煙凝 is 'mist gathering'; 歸鴉倦 ('the returning crows tired') and 投旅店 ('seeking lodging') set the hour of dusk when all things turn homeward.
At the ferry-head new-come geese roost on the sandbar; the River of Stars appears; the watch-tallies hasten; in the lonely village the lamp-fires burn without a flame.
汀沙 is a sandy shoal; 銀河 ('the silver river') is the Milky Way; 更 in 更籌 ('the watch-tally') is gēng, the marker of the night-watches. 光無焰 ('light without flame') is the dim, steady glow of distant lamps.
The wind curls the censer-smoke through the quiet Daoist cloister; in the butterfly dream, the sleeper is nowhere to be seen.
風裊 is 'the wind wafting'; 蝴蝶夢 ('the butterfly dream') alludes to Zhuangzi, who dreamed he was a butterfly and woke unsure which was real — a fitting image for a chapter turning on dreams.
The moon shifts the flower-shadows up the balustrade; the starlight scatters, the water-clock's note changes, and unawares the deep of night is already half spent.
漏聲 is the drip of the water-clock; 換 ('changes') marks the turning of the hours. The lyric closes on midnight — the very hour the doomed dragon will choose to enter the emperor's dream.
The dragon departs in tears, and the narrative pauses for a lyric of nightfall — homing crows, roosting geese, travelers seeking inns, the Milky Way rising over lamp-lit villages, the water-clock counting toward midnight. Such descriptive set-pieces, marking the passage of time and mood, are one of the novel's characteristic pleasures, and this one is placed with care: it carries the reader from the diviner's shop to the deep of night when the dragon will make his desperate appeal.
The lyric's central image is pointedly chosen. The 蝴蝶夢, the 'butterfly dream' of Zhuangzi — who dreamed he was a butterfly and woke unable to say whether he was a man who had dreamed a butterfly or a butterfly now dreaming a man — hangs over a chapter whose hinge is precisely a dream. Within a few lines the Dragon King will step into the sleeping emperor's mind, and the boundary between waking and dreaming, so lightly invoked here, becomes the very mechanism of the plot.