And it was truly this:

Three characters standing on their own. This cue is not folded into a sentence the way 只見那山： was a moment ago, so it opens the showcase by itself — the novel using both of its two forms within a few hundred characters.

Precious towers, jewelled thrones; a high monastery, a famous ground.

The first eight characters do nothing but assert that the place is important. 上剎 is a superior establishment and 名方 a renowned district. 剎 reads chà, the reading for a monastery, not the shā of a split second.

The valley empty, and the earth's pipes many; the precinct still, and heaven's incense scattering.

Sound in one half, scent in the other. 地籟 is the earth's own music in the old triad of heaven's pipes, earth's pipes and man's pipes — the wind playing the landscape like an instrument — and pairing it with 天香 gives the couplet one sense each. 散 is sàn here, the verb: the incense scatters. Nine couplets on, the same character takes its other reading.

Green pines carrying rain screen the high pavilion; kingfisher bamboo holding cloud guards the preaching hall.

The trees are doing the monastery's work for it. Both lines hand the plants transitive verbs — the pines screen, the bamboo guards — and 帶 and 留 in matching positions turn the weather into something they are wearing.

Rose light faint and drifting, and a dragon palace shows; colours blowing loose, and the sand-grain worlds stretch long.

Fourteen characters take the reader from one building to the whole of space. 沙界 are the worlds as numberless as the sands of the Ganges — the standard Buddhist figure for an unimaginable quantity. 長 reads cháng in the level tone, which the rhyme requires.

Vermilion railings, jade doors; painted ridgepoles, carved beams.

Eight characters of pure inventory: four two-word phrases and not a verb among them. The poem drops to this shorter line three times, and each time it is to list rather than to describe.

Sutra-talk, and incense fills the seats; register-talk, and the moon faces the window.

Here is the seam, if anyone were looking for one. 經 is a Buddhist scripture and 籙 a Daoist register, set in matching positions inside a strictly balanced couplet — which is either careless or deliberate, and in this chapter it is deliberate. 當 is dāng, to face or stand opposite.

Birds cry within the cinnabar trees; cranes drink beside the stone spring.

傍 reads páng, and the position decides it: this is a rhyme word and the rhyme is level throughout. The Kāngxī dictionary opens the character with 步光切 from the 唐韻 and 蒲光切 from the 集韻, notes that it stands interchangeably for 旁, and glosses it 近也 and 側也, near and beside. The bàng of leaning against something is a later, falling-tone band.

On four sides flowers open, the jade garden lovely; on three sides gates stand wide, the light of Śrāvastī.

This is the strongest claim the poem makes, and the building has no right to it. 舍衛 is Śrāvastī, the city outside which the Buddha spent his rains-retreats — not a compliment but an address. 舍 reads shè in the transcription.

Towers and terraces jutting up, the gate facing a screen of peaks; bells and chimes unhurried, the sound running long.

虛徐 is a slow, unforced manner, and applying it to the sound of bells is the poem's way of telling the reader that the place is at peace. The second 長 of the poem, again cháng and again carrying the rhyme.

Windows open, and the wind fine; blinds rolled, and the haze wide.

The last of the three short couplets, and the emptiest: two openings and two weathers. After twenty-eight characters of towers, gardens and bells the poem stops asserting anything for a moment and simply lets the air through.

There are monks, and their manner is easy and unhurried; there is nothing of the world, and the mood is harmonious and flourishing.

散 is sǎn here, loose or at leisure — against the sàn of scattering incense earlier in this same poem, the two readings of one character nine couplets apart. 有僧 and 無俗 are set opposite each other, and that is the last thing the poem asserts before its final couplet.

Red dust does not reach this true immortal realm; a quiet land, a temple foundation, a fine place of the Way.

Two more borrowed titles in the last line of a poem that has been handing them out throughout: 招提 is a transcribed word for a monastery and 道場 is the ground where the Way is practised. 場 reads cháng, the level tone the rhyme requires — and the Kāngxī dictionary has no rising-tone reading for the character at all, giving 直良切 and 仲良切, both cháng, with one further spelling 尸羊切 reserved for a mole-cricket's mound. It files the Buddhist 選佛場 under the level tone as well.