Scarcely was the word spoken and he was gone without a trace. In a moment he had come to the Southern Sea, and halted his cloud to look. Behold it:

須臾間, in the space of an instant. The Pilgrim crosses from the western marches of the Tang to the Southern Sea between two clauses, and the narrative stops for a hundred and sixty-four graphs of water.

A boundless ocean, far-reaching; the force of the water joined with the sky.

The rhapsody begins with the sea and will not leave it for five units. 汪洋, vast and spreading.

Auspicious light enfolds the cosmos; a lucky vapour lights the hills and streams.

籠 reads lǒng, to enfold or cover over, not the lóng of the cage. 祥光 and 瑞氣 are the standard signs of a sacred precinct.

A thousand tiers of snowy breakers roar into the blue empyrean; ten thousand folds of misty wave surge through the white day.

滔白晝 — the waves surge through the daylight itself. The couplet is the loudest thing in the chapter.

The water flies to the four quarters; the billows roll round about.

The eight-graph unit restates in miniature what the fourteen-graph unit that follows will expand — the figure of expansion seen already in the rhapsody at the bear-fiend's cave.

Water flying to the four quarters shakes the rolling thunder; billows rolling round about sound the thunderclap.

振轟雷, 鳴霹靂: the sea is described entirely in terms of thunder, which is not a property of water.

Speak no more of the water's force: look rather at what lies within.

休言水勢，且看中間 — the rhetorical turn of the 賦: having spent five units on the sea, the poet dismisses it. 中 reads zhōng.

Dim in five colours, the jewelled and terraced mountain — red, yellow, purple, black, green and blue.

皂 is black. The six colours are named flatly, without figure, and the effect is of an inventory taken by a man too dazzled to compose.

Only now is Guanyin's true and excellent realm to be seen: look upon Mount Luojia of the Southern Sea.

落伽山: 伽 reads qié, as in 伽藍 and 瑜伽. Potalaka, the Bodhisattva's island.

A goodly place! The peaks rise high, their summits piercing the void.

好去處, a goodly place — the same three graphs the narrator has already spent on Black Wind Mountain and on the bear-fiend's cave.

Within are a thousand kinds of rare flower and a hundred sorts of auspicious herb.

中間: zhōng. The catalogue of flowers and herbs answers, item for item, the catalogue at the fiend's gate.

Wind shakes the jewelled trees; sun glances on the golden lotus.

金蓮, the golden lotus, is both a flower and the Bodhisattva's seat.

The Hall of Guanyin, roofed with tiles of lapis glass;

琉璃, lapis or coloured glass. The unit is cut at ； by split_verse; the two halves are a matched pair and are kept as separate units, as in the mountain rhapsody of the opening.

the Cave of Tidal Sound, its door laid over with tortoiseshell.

潮音洞, the Cave of Tidal Sound. 鋪 reads pū, to lay over or spread.

In the shade of the green willows the parrot talks; in the purple bamboo grove the peacock cries.

中: zhōng. 鸚哥, the parrot, and the peacock are Guanyin's birds; the green willow and the purple bamboo are her grove.

On the veined stone the guardians of the Law stand august;

羅紋石, stone veined like figured silk. 護法, the guardians of the Dharma.

before the agate strand, Moksha stands stalwart.

木叉 is Mokṣa — Huì'àn, the Bodhisattva's disciple, second son of the Heavenly King. The rhapsody ends on a name, as the armour-poem of the bear-fiend did.