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 six graphs, one for each pilgrim, each with its own verb of slowing: 緩促, 慢步, 徐行. 銀驄, the silver-dappled horse; 磨擔 is to shift a carrying-pole from shoulder to shoulder, 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 the neutral 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 is always the Tang Monk, 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 the four seasons belonging to Heaven — is the Pilgrim being learned, and he is quite right, and quite wrong. 有何懼哉 is literary Chinese with the final particle, a register he uses 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," not the interrogative shén. Both readings occur within a hundred graphs of one another in this batch.

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 the neutral de. The lead-in 你看這風： closes the prose segment, per the standing convention, and the verse follows inside the monk's own speech — which is why the last unit of the poem 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 graphs, regular throughout: a 詩 rather than a 賦, and put in the Tang Monk's mouth. 巍巍蕩蕩颯飄飄 is four reduplications in seven graphs, and only the last, 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 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 descends 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; 難 is nán. The line looks back to the woodcutter of ch. 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 neutral suffixes zi and er. The monkeys scatter. It is worth remembering who is 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 couplet closes with the wind moving earth and water both, and the closing 」 falls inside the verse unit, since the whole poem is spoken. 迸迸 and 濤濤 answer the 飄飄 of the first line.