善惡之報 Reward of Good and Ill
正是：正是：
逐句解 Line by line
Truly it is said:
The tag 正是, "and so it is said," introduces a closing verse — the moral stamped on the end of the catalogue like a seal on a document.
In life let no man cheat his own heart; gods and ghosts see all too plainly — whom would they let go free?
昭彰 is "plain for anyone to see." The couplet turns the whole tour into a warning: your conscience is under continuous observation, and the observers keep records.
Good and evil, in the end, are surely requited; it is only a question of coming early or late.
And here is the proverb everyone knows. 只爭 is "the only difference is," and 來早與來遲 is "whether it comes early or comes late." 善惡有報 — good and evil both get repaid — is still current Chinese, and this couplet is one of the places it comes from: retribution is not in doubt, only the timetable.
The catalogue resolves into a plain epigram: repayment is certain, only its timing is not.
The verse boils the lurid torments of the preceding rhapsody down to the folk-Buddhist commonplace of 善惡有報 — that the account of conscience is always kept, and always, eventually, settled.