With one hand gripping his trident and the other dragging the tiger, he led the way in front, and Sanzang, leading his horse, came along behind. Winding on across the mountain slope, they suddenly caught sight of a farmstead. Before its gate, the sight was truly this:

迤𨓦 (yǐ lǐ), "winding along," is a variant way of writing 迤邐. The second character, 𨓦, is rare enough to sit outside the range most fonts cover — the first such character to appear in this chapter, and the sort of thing that quietly breaks fonts.

Ancient trees that pierce the sky; wild vines that overrun the path.

The scene-poem begins at the outer edge of the property: old trees, wild vine, nothing tended yet.

In ten thousand ravines the wind-blown dust is cold; on a thousand cliffs the aspect is strange and rare.

It opens wide before it narrows, and the two halves are a matched pair of large round numbers — ten thousand ravines, a thousand cliffs. 氣象 is the bearing or aspect of a landscape, the quality a painter would be trying to catch.

Along one path the wild flowers' fragrance clings to the body; a few stems of secluded bamboo hang green and lush.

數 is shù, "a few" — the counted sense, not shǔ, to enumerate. The couplet moves from the path underfoot up to bamboo at eye height, and 依依 is the only doubled pair in the poem until its very last line.

A thatched gate-tower, a wattle-fenced yard — fit to be sketched, fit to be painted;

The metre breaks into three short beats — 草門樓, 籬笆院, and then a verdict. 堪描堪畫 says the farmstead is fit to be sketched and painted, which is exactly what the poem has spent eight lines doing to it.

a flagstone bridge, whitewashed earthen walls — truly delightful, truly rare.

The matching triplet, built to the same measure. 樂 is lè, delight — not yuè, music. 真樂真稀 answers 堪描堪畫 beat for beat, and these two lines are the only place in the poem where the speaker says what he actually thinks of the place.

The face of autumn is bleak and desolate; the crisp air stands lofty and alone.

Four characters and four characters — the tightest line here. 蕭索 is the standard word for autumn desolation, and 孤高, aloof and lofty, is a thing usually said of a person rather than of air.

By the road the yellow leaves are falling; over the ridge the white clouds drift.

Falling set against drifting, low against high. About as plain as this poem gets. 傍 is ruled páng, "beside," and 落 is luò, to fall, not the là of leaving something behind.

Within the sparse woods the mountain birds go clamouring; outside the farmstead gate the little dogs go yapping.

The poem ends on noise, and on the two doubled pairs it has been saving — 聒聒 and 嘹嘹, both of them animal sounds rather than scenery. And the dogs are the payoff: they are the first evidence that anyone lives here, which is the one thing these travellers have needed since the ridge.