樵夫 The Woodcutter
長老勒馬觀山，正在難行之處，只見那綠莎坡上，佇立著一個樵夫。你道他怎生打扮：长老勒马观山，正在难行之处，只见那绿莎坡上，伫立着一个樵夫。你道他怎生打扮：
逐句解 Line by line
The Elder reined his horse and gazed at the mountain; and just where the going was hardest, he saw, upon a green sedge slope, a woodcutter standing.
The poem stops and the scenery produces a person. 綠莎, lǜ suō, green sedge; 佇立, zhù lì, "to be standing there," with the sense of having stood a while. 勒 is lè, reining in; 著 is the ongoing zhe; 那 is nà.
Consider now how he was got up:
怎生打扮, zěn shēng dǎ ban, "and how was he turned out?" Another storyteller's cue, this one always followed by a head-to-toe portrait.
On his head an old indigo felt hat; on his body a coarse black patched robe.
Hat and coat. 氈笠, zhān lì, a felt hat with a brim, the standard rural weather-gear; 衲衣, nà yī, a robe made of patches — the same word used for a monk's patchwork habit, which is a small hint about who this man really is. In the measure-phrases 一頂 and 一領, 一 is yì.
The old indigo felt hat, that fends off haze and shades the sun — a rare thing indeed;
The portrait now takes each garment in turn. 遮煙蓋日, zhē yān gài rì, "keeps off the haze and shades the sun" — the hat, doing its job.
the coarse black patched robe, taking such joy as forgets all care — a thing seldom seen.
And the coat gets 樂以忘憂, lè yǐ wàng yōu, "so glad he forgets his worries." This is the Analects phrase the Elder was handed two passages ago, now hung on a woodcutter's patched jacket: the contented recluse who wants nothing. The echo is not accidental.
In hand a steel axe, freshly whetted bright; his blade fells the dry wood and binds it tight.
乾柴, gān chái, "dry firewood" — and here 乾 is gān, "dry," not the qián of the trigram, which is the other life this character leads.
Spring's hue upon his eaves, serene, the four seasons blending mild;
四序, sì xù, "the four seasons in their order"; 檐頭, the eaves of his hut. A man whose calendar is the weather.
beyond his person an idle mood, ever the three stars faint and still.
三星, sān xīng, the three stars of Orion's belt, which rise and set on a fixed annual schedule — a farmer's clock long before anyone owned one. 澹澹, "faint and still."
To his last days he lives but as his lot allows — what glory or disgrace need touch these hills for a moment?
The portrait's moral. 隨分, suí fèn, "according to one's allotted share" — 分 read fèn, a portion rather than a division. 榮辱, "honour and disgrace," the pair of things a court career runs on and this man has opted out of.
The band's fear is answered by a man who steps straight out of the poem that just frightened them. He gets the treatment such figures always get — a portrait-poem working down from the hat: old indigo felt, a patched black robe, a steel axe freshly whetted. The reader is being set up. This is not a woodcutter but the Merit-Officer on duty for the day (日值功曹), a heavenly functionary sent down to deliver a warning, and the disguise is good enough that nobody on the road spots it.
The poem paints him as the standard Daoist recluse: content with his allotted share (隨分), indifferent to honour and disgrace, keeping time by Orion rather than by an office. And it gives him 樂以忘憂 — the exact phrase the Elder had reached for two passages earlier. Handing a real monk's virtue to a fake woodcutter is a small, deliberate stitch, quietly tying the disguised officer into the pilgrimage's own moral vocabulary while he plays a bit part.