The Great Sage, riding his cloud and reciting a spell, shook himself and changed into the very likeness of the Barefoot Immortal, then sped on toward the Jade Pool.

駕著 reads with the durative zhe: riding the cloud, and going on riding it, while he works the change of shape.

In no long while he came right up to the Treasure Pavilion, stilled his cloud, stepped lightly forward, and went inside. And there he saw:

按住雲頭, to press a cloud still and bring it down, is the standing phrase for an immortal landing — the equivalent of putting the handbrake on. 只見那裡 is the hand-off again; the rhapsody below is what he walked into.

Fragrance of jade curling and winding,

This one rhymes on -n: 紛, 氳, 沉, 盆, 唇, 新 — six line-endings, and a third distinct rhyme after the -i of the peach garden and the -e of the Barefoot Immortal. Each set-piece in this chapter gets its own sound.

auspicious haze in riotous profusion.

瑞靄 is the auspicious haze that announced the Barefoot Immortal one passage ago, now filling the hall he has been sent away from. The chapter uses the pair exactly twice, and these are the two places.

The jade terrace spread with coloured silks,

瑤臺 is the jade terrace of the immortals. 彩結 are coloured silks knotted into festive hangings — bunting, essentially — and 鋪 (pū) is the verb that spreads them out.

the treasure pavilion breathing a dense sweet vapour.

氤氳 (yīn yūn): a dense sweet vapour, incense hanging in the air without moving. 散 is sàn here, to give off, rather than to scatter.

Phoenix soaring, simurgh wheeling, their forms ethereal;

翥 (zhù) is to soar straight up and 翔 (xiáng) to wheel on a level wing, so the phoenix climbs while the simurgh circles. Two birds, two different motions, one line. 縹緲 reads piāo miǎo, faint and far off.

golden blossoms, jade calyxes, their reflections rising and sinking.

玉萼 is a calyx of jade. The line is made entirely of reflections and contains no solid thing at all — 影浮沉, images lifting and sinking in polished surfaces.

Set out above: nine-phoenix screens of cinnabar cloud,

扆 is yǐ, a standing screen of the kind set behind a seat of honour. 排著 reads with the durative zhe.

eight-treasure stools of purple rainbow,

墩 (dūn): a drum-shaped stool with no back to it. 八寶, the eight treasures, is a fixed decorative set — the sort of motif that turns up on porcelain and embroidery without anyone counting the items.

five-coloured tables traced in gold,

描金 is traced in gold leaf. Notice that all four articles in this stretch come with a number attached — 九鳳, 八寶, 五彩, 千花 — so the furniture is being counted as well as described.

and basins of green jade with a thousand flowers.

碧玉盆: basins of green jade. Last of the four numbered pieces, and the only one whose number is not a small tally — a thousand flowers, against nine phoenixes, eight treasures and five colours.

On the tables, dragon-liver and phoenix-marrow,

龍肝和鳳髓, dragon's liver and phoenix marrow: the proverbial delicacies that by definition cannot be got. The fixed phrase is 龍肝鳳髓, and the poet pads it here with 和, the plain conjunction hé — the same trick the flower-line pulled among the peach trees.

bear's paw and ape's lip.

熊掌與猩唇: bear's paw and ape's lip. With the line above, these make up the conventional set of four impossible dishes — two of them merely very rare, and two not to be obtained at all.

Rare viands of a hundred flavours, every one delicious;

珍饈 (zhēn xiū): rare viands. The piece signs off on a matched pair of doublings, 般般美 in this line answered by 色色新 in the next.

exotic fruits and fine dishes, every kind fresh.

殽 is xiáo, a variant way of writing 肴, dishes or viands. The simplified text keeps this spelling rather than normalising it.

There all was laid out in perfect order — yet not an immortal had come.

鋪設得 is a verb with its complement, so 得 takes the light linking de — the same structure as 慌得 earlier on. And then the punchline: 卻還未有仙來, the hall is finished and completely empty, which is exactly the opening the Great Sage needs.