The master slackened his grey-dappled mount, the Great Sage Sun stayed his cloud and slowed his pace, and Zhu Wuneng shifted his load and walked at leisure.

Three clauses of seven characters, one per pilgrim, each with its own verb of slowing down: 緩促, 慢步, 徐行. 銀驄 is the silver-dappled horse; 磨擔 is shifting a carrying-pole from one shoulder to the other, and 擔 is the noun, dàn.

They were still looking at the mountain when of a sudden they heard a whirlwind get up in a great blast.

聞得 takes toneless de. 旋風, a whirlwind — and in this novel a whirlwind is never weather.

Sanzang, on his horse, was frightened at heart. "Wukong, a wind is rising."

心驚, frightened at heart. It is the Tang Monk who reads the omen correctly, as it always is, and always to no purpose.

The Pilgrim said, "And what is there in a wind to fear? It is the breath of Heaven's four seasons. What is there in it to dread?"

天家四時之氣 — the breath of Heaven's four seasons — is the Pilgrim being learned, and he is quite right and quite wrong at once. 有何懼哉 is literary Chinese complete with its closing flourish, the register he keeps for showing off.

Sanzang said, "This wind is exceedingly evil. It is not like the wind of heaven."

甚惡 takes 甚 as shèn, the intensifier "exceedingly," rather than the question-word shén, "what." This is worth marking because it is the only place in the whole chapter where the character is read that way; every one of its other appearances is a question.

The Pilgrim said, "How can you tell it is not like the wind of heaven?" Sanzang said, "Look at this wind:

怎見得, "how does it appear that," takes toneless de. The cue 你看這風： closes the prose segment, per the standing convention, and the poem follows inside the monk's own speech — which is why the last unit of it carries the closing quotation mark.

Vast and rolling it comes with a hissing gust; boundless and dim, it issues from the blue empyrean.

Eight couplets of seven characters, regular throughout: a 詩 rather than a 賦, and put in the Tang Monk's mouth. 巍巍蕩蕩颯飄飄 packs four doublings into seven characters, and only the last of them, 飄飄, describes the wind itself.

Crossing the ridge, one hears only a thousand trees roar; entering the wood, one sees only ten thousand culms sway.

千樹吼 against 萬竿搖. The wind is described only by what it does to other things, which is the poem's whole method and the reason it works.

On the bank it shakes the willows to their very roots; in the garden it blows the blossom and bears off the leaf.

連根動, moved from the root — the willow being the one tree that bends rather than breaks. 帶葉飄, carrying the leaves off with it.

The fishing-boats that gather their nets make every cable fast; the passenger craft that drop their sails cast their anchors, all of them.

盡拋錨 takes 盡 as jìn, "all, every one." The poem comes down here from mountains to human traffic: fishermen, then travellers, then woodcutters.

Halfway on the road the traveller loses his way; on the mountain the woodcutter cannot lift his load.

樵子擔難挑 — the woodcutter cannot shoulder his load. 擔 is again the noun, dàn, and 難 is nán. The line looks back to the woodcutter of chapter 14 and forward to Bajie, who is carrying a load up this very ridge.

Among the fairy fruit-trees the monkeys scatter; in the thickets of rare blossom the deer flee away.

猴子 and 鹿兒 take the toneless suffixes zi and er. The monkeys scatter. It is worth remembering who is standing there listening to this poem.

Before the cliff the junipers and cypresses go over one by one; below the ravine the pine and the bamboo shed leaf upon leaf.

檜柏顆顆倒: 檜 is guì, and 倒 is dǎo, "to fall," not dào. 松篁, pine and bamboo.

It scatters the soil and flings up the dust till the sand goes flying; it overturns the river and stirs the sea till the billows roll."

The last couplet has the wind moving earth and water both, and the closing 」 falls inside the verse unit, because the whole poem is spoken aloud. 迸迸 and 濤濤 answer the 飄飄 of the opening line.