And this pagoda — truly it was:

The announcement is printed as part of the same run as the first line here, so this unit opens the description. The other showcase in this stretch had its announcement standing alone. Both arrangements occur in the chapter, and the split follows the printing rather than the sense.

Lofty, leaning on the Milky Way; abrupt, riding upon the void.

漢 is the 天漢, the River of Heaven — what English calls the Milky Way. The opening couplet is four characters against four, and it is the only part of the poem that looks at the tower from outside and at a distance.

Rightly named the tower of five-coloured glass, the peak of the thousand-gold relic.

舍利 shè lì transcribes the Sanskrit śarīra: the hard bead-like grains recovered from the ashes of a cremated master, held in the tradition to be pearl-shaped and to give off light of themselves. A pagoda exists to house them. That is what this one is, and the light it throws over four kingdoms is theirs. The reading is shè, not the shě that means to cast a thing away. The poem has not yet let on that the relic has been taken out. 千金 is a figure for great value and not a weight.

The stair winds as though boring through a cave; a door opens as though one were coming out of a cage.

Both comparisons are of confinement escaped — boring out of a cave, coming out of a cage — which is an odd note to strike about a staircase, and a pointed one in a chapter where men have just been unlocked from pillars a few hours earlier. 似 holds sì, as it does throughout this project.

The treasure-vase casts its shadow at the moon on heaven's rim; the golden bell carries its note on the wind off the sea.

寶瓶 is the vase-shaped finial at a pagoda's summit and 金鐸 the bronze bell hung at the eaves-corners to sound in the wind. Both are still working. The poem's damage is all lower down.

But look at it — the airy eaves with their bracket-sets, the utmost summit holding cloud.

拱斗 is the 斗栱 bracket-set, the interlocking cluster of timbers that carries a Chinese eave — the thing that lets a roof reach out so far without a post under it. 斗 takes dǒu, because the block is named for the dǒu, the grain measure whose squared-off shape it recalls; 康熙 gives it at 當口切, 音陡, 量名, a measure-name. Not the dòu of fighting. This project has met the character before only inside 觔斗, a somersault.

Airy eaves with bracket-sets, worked out of cunning stone into phoenixes threading flowers; utmost summit holding cloud, built into a stupa with dragons wreathing it in mist.

The line before ends on two four-character phrases, and this line picks them up in order and opens each one out. The figure has a name — 頂真, catching the tail of one phrase and carrying it on into the next. The two halves are set here as one line rather than as the printing cut them, because they are a single strictly matched sentence.

Gazing out, one may see a thousand lǐ beyond; climbing high, one seems to stand in the ninth heaven.

九霄 is the highest of the heavens in the Daoist reckoning. This is the last couplet that treats the tower as a marvel; from here to the end the poem describes only what has gone wrong with it.

Storey upon storey, glazed lamps above the doors — dust on them and no fire; step upon step, white jade railings before the eaves — grime piled up and insects flying.

The turn is made without any announcement at all. 有塵無火, dust on them and no fire, is four characters and it converts the whole description — because these are the same glazed lamps as the one lit downstairs a few sentences ago, and these are dark. 層層 and 步步 are doubled frames and keep full tones at each syllable.

In the pagoda's heart, on the Buddha's seat, the incense smoke has utterly ceased; outside the window lattice, before the spirits' faces, spiders' webs are drawn across in a haze.

蛛網 has appeared once before in the chapter, in the poem about the temple below, where the webs were hanging in front of the eaves. Here they are drawn across the faces of the images. The two poems are describing one neglect at two heights.

In the censer there is much rat-dropping; in the lamp-cup little melted oil.

The plainest couplet in the poem and the worst. 鼠糞 in a censer is not neglect but infestation, and 少油鎔 explains why the glazed lamps are dark: nobody has filled them.

All because the treasure in the middle was lost in secret, the monks were tormented to their deaths and their lives came to nothing.

暗失 is to lose a thing without knowing how. It is the poem's whole account of the theft, and it names nobody. 落空 is to come to nothing, with 落 keeping luò.

Tripitaka sets his heart upon sweeping the pagoda, and shall surely see its old face again.

重見 takes chóng, to see again, not the zhòng of weight. 管教 is an everyday guarantee — depend upon it. The poem ends by promising an outcome the story has not reached yet, which is a liberty verse takes in this novel and prose does not.