The Pilgrim said: 'Brother — you ask why I grew agitated?'

He was not shouting from fear. 發急為何: why he grew agitated — 為 read wèi, 'for what reason.' The answer is the garden itself. 行 = xíng.

'Just look at this:'

你看這, 'just look at this' — the tag that hands the floor over to the descriptive set-piece that follows, a 賦 or rhapsody.

The painted balustrades are wrecked, the jewel-dressed pavilions lean awry.

The catalogue of ruin opens with the architecture: 彩畫雕欄, painted and carved railings, now 狼狽, in wreckage; 寶妝亭閣, jewel-dressed pavilions, now 攲歪, leaning off true.

Sedge-banks and knotweed shores lie wholly buried in dust; peonies and tú-mí roses have all decayed.

莎汀蓼岸: sedge-flats and knotweed banks, the planted waterside of an ornamental garden. 荼䕷 is the tú-mí rose, a late-spring rambler whose flowering traditionally marks the end of the season — a rare character in 䕷, met almost only in this plant's name. 盡 = jìn, 'wholly.'

Jasmine and rugosa rose breathe a faded scent; tree-peony and lily bloom to no avail.

茉莉玫瑰: jasmine and rugosa rose. 牡丹百合: tree-peony and lily. 空開 — to bloom in vain — is the saddest phrase in the passage: the flowers are still doing their work, and there is nobody left to look.

Hibiscus and rose-of-Sharon choke in rank grass; rare herbs and wondrous blossoms are smothered and spoiled.

芙蓉木槿: hibiscus and rose-of-Sharon. 異卉奇葩: rare herbs and wonderful blossoms. 垓垓 is rank and overgrown; 壅壞, choked and spoiled — smothered by the weeds that moved in.

The cunning rockery peaks have all toppled; the pond has run dry and its fish grown feeble.

巧石山峰: the artfully piled 'peaks' of a rockery, the miniature mountains at the heart of any Chinese garden, now all fallen over (俱倒, 倒 = dǎo). 水涸魚衰: the pond dried out and the fish gone feeble. A garden is water and stone before it is anything else, and both have failed.

Green pine and purple bamboo are like dry kindling; the paths are thick with tangled mugwort and wormwood.

似乾柴: like dry firewood (似 = sì; 乾 = gān, 'dry,' not qián, the trigram). 蒿艾, mugwort and wormwood, are the weeds that come up wherever nobody is tending.

Cinnamon and green-fleshed peach have their boughs broken; pomegranate and kerria have their roots wrenched askew.

丹桂碧桃: cinnamon-osmanthus and green-fleshed peach. 海榴棠棣: pomegranate and kerria. 枝損…根歪: boughs broken above, roots wrenched below.

At the bridgehead and along the winding path lies grey-green moss — such is the desolate compass of this garden.'

蒼苔: grey-green moss, the growth that arrives when feet stop coming. 冷落花園境界 — 'the cold, neglected compass of this garden' — closes the rhapsody by naming the whole scene at once.