齊心圍繞 Circling Him With One Heart
這場好殺：小太子，楮白槍，四柄錕鋘劍更強。悟空又使金箍棒，齊心圍繞殺妖王。妖王其實神通大，不懼分毫左右搪。狼牙棒是佛中寶，劍砍槍掄莫可傷。只聽狂風聲吼吼，又觀惡氣混茫茫。那個有意思凡弄本事，這個專心拜佛取經章。幾番馳騁，數次張狂。噴雲霧，閉三光，奮怒懷嗔各不良。多時三乘無上法，致令百藝苦相將。这场好杀：小太子，楮白枪，四柄锟鋘剑更强。悟空又使金箍棒，齐心围绕杀妖王。妖王其实神通大，不惧分毫左右搪。狼牙棒是佛中宝，剑砍枪抡莫可伤。只听狂风声吼吼，又观恶气混茫茫。那个有意思凡弄本事，这个专心拜佛取经章。几番驰骋，数次张狂。喷云雾，闭三光，奋怒怀嗔各不良。多时三乘无上法，致令百艺苦相将。
逐句解 Line by line
A fine battle it was:
場 is cháng, the counting word for an event and its course. The phrase closes one block of the edition and the poem it opens begins in the next, across a blank line — the two belong together and are set here as one passage.
The little prince, the mulberry-white spear, and the four Kunwu swords stronger still.
Three characters, three characters, then seven — the poem's opening measure. 錕鋘 is kūn wú, the legendary sword-metal.
Wukong too plied his gold-banded rod; with one heart they circled and beset the fiend king.
齊心 — with one heart — is the poem's claim for the attackers, and the couplet after it is the fiend's answer to that claim.
The fiend king's divine powers were great indeed; not a hair's breadth afraid, he fended them off left and right.
分 is fēn in 分毫, a fraction. 其實 concedes the point flatly: the poem is not pretending the odds are even.
The wolf-tooth club was a treasure from among the Buddhas; sword-hack and spear-swing could do it no hurt.
佛中寶 — a treasure from among the Buddhas — states outright what the chapter has so far only implied. The fiend's weapon comes from the Buddha's own establishment, which is why nothing mortal or divine can mark it.
One heard only the wild wind roaring and roaring; one saw besides the baleful vapour spreading vast and dim.
吼吼 and 茫茫 are doubled words for sound and sight, one to each half — roaring and roaring, vast and dim.
That one, bent on longing for the mortal world, was playing at his powers; this one, single-hearted in worshipping the Buddha, was after the scripture-rolls.
思凡 is read sī fán, to long for the mortal world. The line divides as 有意 plus 思凡, answering 專心 plus 拜佛 across the couplet — bent upon longing, against single-minded in worship. Read it the other way, as 意思, and 凡 is left stranded with nothing to do.
Several bouts of galloping to and fro; several turns of raging wildly.
數 is shù, several. Four characters and four, the poem's shortest couplet.
Spouting cloud and mist, shutting out the three luminaries; rousing anger and harbouring wrath, and neither of them good.
三光, the three luminaries, are sun, moon and stars. The line runs three, three and seven, matching the poem's opening measure.
For a long while the unsurpassed law of the Three Vehicles brought the hundred arts to grapple bitterly with one another.
乘 is shèng in 三乘, the Three Vehicles of Buddhist doctrine — the falling-tone reading, not the chéng of mounting or seizing a chance that the same character takes elsewhere in this chapter. 相 is xiāng, mutually.
This is a battle poem in every respect except the one that decides how it is printed: the edition sets it as an ordinary unindented line, so it is presented here as prose. Metrically it is as regular as the poem in the earlier fight — seven-character couplets with a three-and-three opening and a matching one near the close — but the edition governs, and where the edition does not mark verse the reader is not shown verse.
What the poem argues is that the fight is unwinnable, and it argues it in the middle couplet rather than at the end. The club is a treasure from among the Buddhas — that explains every failure in the chapter at a stroke. The dragons could not mark it, the generals cannot mark it, and the reason is that it belongs to the establishment they all serve.
The couplet on the two fighters is the closest the chapter comes to stating a moral. One of them longs for the mortal world and plays at his powers; the other worships and works. It is a distinction between a being who has come down and a being who is going up, and the poem puts them in the same grammatical frame to make the contrast land.