The woman said with a laugh, "A pity, a pity."

可憐 here really does mean pity, and it is mock pity — quite different from the aesthetic how-moving of the same two characters in the autumn poem. She has changed tactics mid-scene.

"What good is there in leaving the household life?"

A blunt question, and the first genuinely dangerous one she has asked. Offering wealth failed; now she attacks the value of the life itself.

Tripitaka said, "Lady bodhisattva — and you who remain in the household, what good is there in that?"

女菩薩, lady bodhisattva, is a courteous form of address to a woman — and, once again, accidentally accurate. 在家人, one who stays in the household, is the exact opposite number of 出家人: the two terms divide the Buddhist world in half. Tripitaka has stopped playing deaf. He has taken the question and handed it straight back.

The woman said, "Elder, pray be seated, and let me tell you the good of the householder's life."

說與你聽, tell it for you to hear — the run-up to a recited poem. The quotation mark that opens here does not close until the last line of the verse: she is speaking all of it.

"How is this to be shown?"

怎見得, how is that to be shown? — with the structural 得 (de). This is the storyteller's hinge, the rhetorical question that exists purely to make room for the verse about to be quoted.

"There is a poem to prove it."

有詩為證, there is a poem to prove it, with 為 as wéi, to serve as. It is one of the workhorse formulas of the book — this chapter alone uses it three times — and it is worth learning to spot: when you meet it, prose is about to stop and singing is about to start. Here the singer is the widow, so the poem runs on inside her speech.

The poem says:

詩曰, the poem says — the last tag before the verse itself. Four couplets follow, and the widow's closing quotation mark rides the final line.

In spring she cuts fāngshèng ornaments and dons fresh gauze-silk; / in summer changes to light silk and delights in the green lotus;

方勝 (fāng shèng) is a lozenge ornament made of two overlapping diamonds, cut from paper or silk and worn or pasted up as a charm; 新羅 here is a fine gauze silk. 著新羅, to wear the new silk, takes 著 as the lexical zhuó. 綠荷 is the green lotus. The poem starts its circuit of the year.

in autumn there is new-brewed fragrant glutinous wine; / and when winter comes, in a warm chamber the flushed face grows drunk.

新蒭 is freshly brewed ale, with 蒭 (chú) standing in here for new liquor; 糯酒 is glutinous-rice wine. 暖閣 is a heated inner room, and 醉顏酡 the flush wine puts on a face.

In the four seasons every kind of enjoyment is at hand; / at the eight festivals each rare delicacy abounds.

四時受用, enjoyments through the four seasons; 般般有, every sort is to be had, with 般 as bān. 八節 are the eight turning-points of the solar year — the solstices, equinoxes and the four beginnings of the seasons; 珍饈 is rare food.

Brocade-lined and damask-spread, on the night of the flowered candles — / far better than trudging on foot to bow before Amitābha.

The couplet the whole poem was built to reach. 襯錦鋪綾 is lined with brocade and spread with damask, where 鋪 is the verb pū, to spread, not the noun pù, a shop. 花燭夜, the night of the flowered candles, means the wedding night and nothing else. 行腳, to go on foot as a mendicant, takes 行 as xíng; 禮彌陀 is to bow before Amitābha. A wedding bed on one side of the scales and a pilgrimage on the other: she has been building to that comparison for eight lines.