樵夫閑趣 The Woodcutter's Idle Hours
樵夫道：「你那閑時又不如我的閑時好也。亦有詩為證。詩曰：樵夫道：「你那闲时又不如我的闲时好也。亦有诗为证。诗曰：
逐句解 Line by line
The woodcutter said: 'Your idle hours are still no match for the goodness of mine. I too have a poem to prove it. The poem runs:'
那 in 你那閑時 is the pointing nà, and 為 in 為證 is wéi. The woodcutter answers a 律詩 with a 律詩, matching form and theme as he has matched everything else so far.
At my leisure I watch the white clouds drift, faint and far; sitting alone in my thatched hut, I close my door of bamboo.
The mirroring is exact, and meant to be noticed: in the woodcutter's 首聯, 縹緲白雲, faint ethereal clouds, answers 蒼天白鶴, and 竹扉, a bamboo door, answers 蒼扉. Two opening couplets built to the same specification.
With nothing to do, I set my children to open the scrolls and read; and now and then, facing a guest, I take up a game of go.
訓兒, instructing the children, answers the fisherman's 教子; 對客 is 'facing a guest' and 把棋圍 is to play 圍棋, go. Keep hold of that board. Later in this chapter the emperor Taizong and his minister 魏徵 sit down to the same game, and a dragon dies over it.
When joy comes, staff in hand, I sing along the fragrant path; when the mood strikes, I carry my qin up the green mountainside.
策杖 is to walk leaning on a staff; 興 here is xìng, mood or inspiration, and 翠微 is the hazy green of the mid-slopes. The 頸聯 turns, like the fisherman's, to mood and motion — but outward, to hills that invite walking and song.
Straw sandals, a hempen sash, a coverlet of coarse cloth — with an easy heart, far better than wearing robes of silk.
麻絛 is a hempen sash. 強似, 'better than,' takes 似 as sì, and 著 in 著羅衣, 'to wear silk robes,' is zhuó. The closing 尾聯 answers the fisherman's 紫綬衣 with 羅衣: silk refused a second time, for an easy heart. The 」 closes the poem.
The woodcutter's poem is built as an exact mirror of the fisherman's, couplet answering couplet: white clouds for white cranes, a bamboo door for a grey-wood one, children set to their books for a son taught to twist a line, and a final refusal of silk robes to set beside the refusal of the purple ribbon. This deliberate parallelism between two matched poems is a favorite structural game of the novel's verse, and half the pleasure lies in checking the join.
One image here quietly loads the gun. The woodcutter's 對客把棋圍, 'facing a guest, I take up a game of go,' introduces the motif of the leisurely 圍棋 match — the very pastime at which, later in this chapter, Taizong and 魏徵 will be sitting when 魏徵, nodding off over the board, beheads a dragon in his dream. What appears here as a token of rustic ease returns as the hinge of the plot.