The prince said, "You would know my skill? Wait while I tell it out:

The invitation to listen is carried inside the prince's own speech, with the quotation left open — it does not close again until the poem ends, ten couplets later.

My forebears dwelt in the Land of Flowing Sands in the western country; my father was king of that sandy realm.

為 is wéi, to be. The poem opens on ancestry, which is how a formal self-introduction in this register begins — name, father, kingdom, then everything else.

From childhood my body was full of sickness and pain; my fate ran against the Canopy star, and a baleful star obstructed it.

華 is huá here — 華蓋 is the Canopy constellation, and the reading is not the huà the same character takes for the western marchmount a few passages back. 干 is gān, to run up against. Being born under a bad star is as literal here as astrology gets.

Because my teacher longed from afar for the formula of long life, it fell to my lot to meet him, and he gave me a prescription.

分 is fèn, a share allotted to you — 有分, to be fated to something. 長 is cháng in 長生, long life.

Half a grain of cinnabar drove the sickness away and back; I chose to follow him in practice and not to be a king.

為 is wéi again, and 不 before it therefore stays bù: the falling bú would belong before this character's other reading.

My study perfected, I do not age, and share the span of heaven; my face is forever that of a youth.

少 is shào in 少年, meaning young, not the shǎo that means few. This is the couplet that answers the fiend's jibe about being a child.

I have hastened to the Dragon-Flower Assembly; I have ridden cloud to the Buddha's hall.

龍華會 is the Dragon-Flower Assembly, the gathering at which Maitreya will preach after his descent into the world. Hold that in mind: Maitreya is the god who ends this chapter. 華 is again huá.

I have caught mist and seized wind and gathered in water-monsters; taken dragons and mastered tigers and held the mountain ground.

場 is cháng. Sense alone would give chǎng, since a mountain ground is a place — but the character stands at the end of a line, and every other line of this poem closes on a level tone in -ang. Where two readings are both available, the rhyme decides.

To comfort the people I raised a stūpa high; to still the sea I made bright the deep light of the relics.

浮屠塔 is a stūpa and 舍利 the relics enshrined in one. The chapter described a pagoda standing at his master's monastery a few passages back, and the poem here has the prince raising one; it does not say outright that they are the same, and leaves the reader to put them together.

The point of my mulberry-white spear can bind a monster; the sleeve of my pale black robe subdues a fiend.

降 is xiáng, to subdue — both the sense and the rhyme require it, since jiàng falls and this poem rhymes level throughout. 緇 is the black of a monk's habit.

And now, at quiet ease within Pin City, over the wide earth my name is spread and they speak of Little Zhang!"

樂 is lè, ease, not the yuè of music that the pagoda poem used. The quotation closes here, ten couplets after it opened.