原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
含詞賦 With rhapsody
樵子 Down from the Wood
那樵子：那樵子：
正在坡前伐朽柴，忽逢長老自東來。正在坡前伐朽柴，忽逢长老自东来。
停柯住斧出林外，趨步將身上石崖。停柯住斧出林外，趋步将身上石崖。
逐句解 Line by line
那樵子：
那樵子：
That woodcutter —
樵子 (qiáo zi), "woodcutter." 那 read nà; 子 suffix zi.
正在坡前伐朽柴，忽逢長老自東來。
正在坡前伐朽柴，忽逢长老自东来。
Just as before the slope he hewed at rotten wood, / of a sudden he met the Elder, come from the east.
伐朽柴 (fá xiǔ chái), "to hew rotten wood." 長老 — 長 read zhǎng.
停柯住斧出林外，趨步將身上石崖。
停柯住斧出林外，趋步将身上石崖。
Staying his hand and stilling his axe, he came out of the wood, / and with hurried steps brought himself up onto the stone crag.
停柯住斧 (tíng kē zhù fǔ), "to stay the branch and still the axe." 將身 (jiāng shēn), "to bring one’s person" — 將 read jiāng.
A second, shorter verse — a pair of regulated lines — shifts from the woodcutter’s appearance to his action: hewing at rotten wood, he sees the Elder approaching, and comes down from the trees onto the crag to hail him. The two poems together (dress, then deed) follow the standard two-beat introduction of a minor figure.
The staging is deliberate: the officer positions himself above the pilgrims (上石崖), on the height, from which he can call his warning down — a small piece of blocking that lends his message the authority of a voice from above, fitting his true identity as a celestial functionary.