Pilgrim was still sighing when suddenly he heard the crash of cannon-fire, and saw the east gate open and a train of horse and men burst forth — truly a hunting host, and mighty in its might.

Cannon, the east gate opening, and the hunt pouring out — the ghost's prediction coming true on schedule. 聽得 takes the linking de; 開處 is "where it opened"; 一路人馬 is a column of horse and men.

One saw only this:

但見 — "all one saw was this" — the formula that opens the set-piece.

At dawn they issue from the east of the forbidden city, dividing their ring amid the shallow grass.

The verse runs eleven couplets in five-character lines before it changes shape at the end. 禁城 is the forbidden city, 禁 read jìn; 分圍 is to divide and encircle — the hunt is already a ring closing; 淺草中 takes the locative zhōng.

Bright banners unfurl, mirroring the sun; white horses gallop, breasting the wind.

Banners and horses, sun and wind, in perfect parallel — each half of the line answering the other word for word. 驟 is to gallop; 迎風 is to face into the wind.

Alligator-drums boom and thunder; lances, pair upon pair, thrust forward.

鼉鼓 tuó gǔ are drums headed with alligator hide, the loudest thing available; 鼕鼕 is their boom; 標槍 are lances.

The hawk-bearing troops are fierce and fiery; the hound-leading generals, bold and valiant.

Hawks and hounds, the two halves of a Chinese hunt. 牽犬將 has 將 standing alone as jiàng, an officer, balanced against 架鷹軍, the hawk-bearing troops. 驍雄 is bold and brave.

Fire-cannon shake the very sky; lime-poles glow red in the sun.

A nicely domestic weapon among the cannon: the 粘竿 is a bamboo pole limed at the tip for catching birds. The character 粘 carries the sticky sense here (the rhyme books give it as nián), though the compound 粘竿 is standard as zhān. 火炮 is cannon.

Every man draws his crossbow-bolt; each one slings a carved bow.

Two doubled openings in a row — 人人, 個個, every man and each one — driving the sense of a mass. 支弩箭 is to set the crossbow bolt; 挎雕弓 is to sling the carved bow.

Nets are spread below the hillside; snares laid out along the little paths.

Nets below the slope, snares along the paths: the ring is complete before a single arrow flies. 鋪繩 has 鋪 as pū, to spread out, not pù, a shop; 小徑中 takes the locative zhōng.

A single cry startles like a thunderclap; a thousand riders throng like panther and bear.

The beaters' shout, and a thousand riders. 貔熊 pí xióng, panther and bear, is the standard figure for fierce soldiers; 霹靂 is a thunderclap.

The cunning hare can scarce save its skin; the wary river-deer’s wit, too, is spent.

And now the verse turns from hunters to hunted, and stays there for three couplets. 狡兔 is the cunning hare — from the proverb about the hare with three burrows — and 乖獐 the wary river-deer. Both are clever; neither is clever enough. 難 is nán, hardly.

For fox and vixen the allotted span is done; the elk and deer perish in the midst of it.

該命盡 — the allotted span used up, with 盡 as jìn. The language is of fate rather than sport, which is a strange note to strike in a hunting poem and entirely deliberate. 喪當中 takes the locative zhōng.

The mountain pheasant can hardly wing free; how should the wild fowl escape the peril?

Birds now, and the same fatalism. 山雉 is the mountain pheasant; 避兇 is to dodge disaster; 難 again nán, hardly.

They all pick out and seize the mountain grounds to take the fierce beasts, and break and blast the forest trees to shoot the flying things.

The closing couplet abandons the five-character measure the poem has kept for eleven couplets and runs to nine characters and then seven, as though the hunt had broken its own bounds. 摧殘 is to break and ravage; 都揀占 has 都 as dōu and 占 as zhàn, to seize.