Now although the Great Sage had been driven off by the Tang Monk, he could not put an end to his longing and his sighs. Before long the great Eastern Ocean rose into view, and he said, “It has been five hundred years since last I traveled this road!” And there before him lay the sea-water:

Wukong is going home, and the first thing the chapter does is slow down and look at the water. The five hundred years he counts off are the years he spent pinned under Five-Phases Mountain, and the road east is the road back to 花果山, Flower-Fruit Mountain — he has not travelled it since he was hauled off it in chains. 那 is the pointing that here, nà, in both 那大聖 and 那海水 — not the questioning nǎ that turns up later on.

Misted waves rolling boundless, mighty billows drifting long.

The sea-rhapsody opens in its shortest gear: two matched phrases of four characters, set side by side with nothing to join them.

The misted waves, rolling boundless, meet the River of Heaven; the mighty billows, drifting long, thread the veins of the earth.

Now the same two phrases run out to seven characters each and reach in opposite directions. 天河 is the River of Heaven, the Milky Way. 地脈 are the earth's veins, the channels its energy runs along the way blood runs in a body — the term a geomancer uses when he picks the spot for a grave. The sea touches both ends of the world at once.

The tide comes surging and turbulent; the flood-waters soak the curving bay.

A pair set up to be unpacked: the next two lines take 潮來洶湧 and 水浸灣環 in turn and give each one a full line of its own.

The tide comes surging, like a thunderclap roaring through the three months of spring;

三春 is the whole of spring, its three months counted as one stretch.

the flood soaks the winding bay, like a wild gale blowing through the nine tens of summer.

九夏 is summer, and the nine are not days but weeks. The old calendar split each season's ninety days into nine ten-day stretches, so summer is nine of them — which is what the English keeps. Spring and autumn were counted the same way, nine ten-day stretches apiece. Here it answers 三春 across the couplet, the two halves of the warm year, one storm apiece. Tang Taizong built a line on the very same pairing.

The blessed elders who ride the dragon must cross it always with knitted brows;

乘 is chéng, to ride. The dragon-riders are Daoist immortals, the beings for whom this crossing is routine — and even they make it with their brows knitted. When the seasoned crew look nervous, the passenger should worry.

the immortal lads astride the crane pass over it, back and forth, in unfeigned dread.

The crane-riding lads answer the dragon-riding elders line for line. Both are immortals, and both dread the water.

Near the shore stands no village or shrine; along the water float but few fishing boats.

少 is shǎo, few, not shào. No village on the shore, barely a boat on the water: the sea is emptying of people as we watch.

The waves roll up snow of a thousand years; the wind breeds autumn in the sixth month.

Two impossible measurements. 千年雪 is snow a thousand years old, thrown up by the waves; 六月秋 is autumn breeding in the sixth month, the height of summer. Neither is meant to be counted — this is cold pushed past the point where the calendar still works.

Wild fowl come and go as they will; sand-birds sink and rise as they please.

憑 and 任 are a matched pair meaning as they please, at will. The birds have the run of the place, which is another way of saying that nobody else does.

Before the eye no angler appears; at the ear only the gulls are heard.

No angler for the eye, only gulls for the ear. The line takes a man away and hands you back a bird.

In the depths the roaming fish are glad; at the sky's rim the passing geese are forlorn.

The rhapsody ends on a split screen: fish glad in the depths, geese grieving at the sky's rim. It is also a fair description of the monkey watching it, free of the pilgrimage at last and miserable about it.