壽星臨會 The Star of Longevity
王母正著仙姬、仙子歌舞，觥籌交錯，不多時，忽又聞得一陣異香來鼻噢，驚動滿堂星與宿、天仙。佛祖把杯停，各各擡頭迎目候。霄漢中間，現老人，手捧靈芝飛藹，繡葫蘆藏蓄萬年丹，寶籙名書千紀壽。王母正著仙姬、仙子歌舞，觥筹交错，不多时，忽又闻得一阵异香来鼻噢，惊动满堂星与宿、天仙。佛祖把杯停，各各擡头迎目候。霄汉中间，现老人，手捧灵芝飞蔼，绣葫芦藏蓄万年丹，宝箓名书千纪寿。
逐句解 Line by line
The Queen Mother was just having the immortal maidens and lasses sing and dance, horn-cups and tallies crossing merrily, when before long there suddenly came a waft of strange fragrance to the nose, startling all the stars and constellations and heavenly immortals filling the hall.
正著: 著 = zhuó (to bid/set to a task, as in 又著仙姬 just above). 觥籌交錯, horn-cups and counting-tallies intermingling — the classic idiom for a lively feast. 一陣: yí (before zhèn, 4th tone). 星與宿: 宿 = xiù (a constellation/lunar lodge). Crux: 噢 (U+5662) here functions as a verb "to reach/be smelled at the nose" (i.e. = 嗅); encoded with reading xiù ahead of confirmation — see commentary and the carry-forward flag.
The Buddha set down his cup; each raised his head and watched expectantly. In the midst of the cloud-river appeared an old man, bearing in his hands a numinous mushroom amid drifting mist, an embroidered gourd storing the ten-thousand-year elixir, and a treasure-register inscribing a lifespan of a thousand cycles.
霄漢, the cloud-reaches / Milky Way. 中間: 中 = zhōng. 靈芝 (líng zhī), the numinous fungus of immortality; 寶籙: 籙 = lù (a heavenly register). The old man is the Star of Longevity (Shòuxīng), entering with the standard emblems of long life.
In his grotto, heaven and earth are his to roam at will; within his gourd, sun and moon attend his attainment. He wanders the Four Seas, delighting in ease; idle and free, the Ten Continents gather to him.
壺中日月 — "sun and moon within the gourd," the Daoist image of a whole cosmos contained in a hermit's gourd, time flowing at the adept's will. 樂 = yuè? No — here lè ("to delight in ease"). 十洲, the Ten Continents of the immortals; 輻輳 (fú còu), to converge like spokes to a hub.
He has gone to the Peach Banquet and been drunk how many times; waking, the bright moon is still as it was. Long of head, big of ear, short of frame — in the quarter of the South Pole he is called the Elder of Long Life.
長頭大耳: 長 = cháng ("long-headed"). 南極, the South Pole — the Star of Longevity is the 南極老人星 (Canopus), god of long life. 還依舊: 還 = hái. His portrait closes the gentle, comic image of the deathless drunkard for whom aeons pass like a night's sleep.
The banquet now receives its first great guest: the Star of Longevity (壽星, the South-Pole Old Man / Canopus), arriving on a waft of fragrance with the emblems of long life — the numinous 靈芝, the elixir-gourd, the register of a thousand-cycle lifespan. His portrait-verse is affectionate and faintly comic: a deathless adept for whom Peach Banquets and drunken aeons pass like a single night, waking always to the same bright moon.
The 壺中日月 image — "sun and moon within the gourd" — is a cherished Daoist trope: an entire cosmos, with its own flow of time, held inside a hermit's gourd. It rhymes pointedly with the chapter's central lesson. The monkey could not escape the Buddha's palm because he could not perceive the encompassing frame; the Star of Longevity, by contrast, carries a whole world within his gourd and roams the greater one at ease. Mastery, the contrast suggests, is not breaking out of containment but dwelling freely within the right relation of small and great.
A textual note. The 世德堂 source writes the graph 噢 (U+5662) in 異香來鼻噢, where the sense is plainly "the fragrance reached and was smelled at the nose" — the graph functioning as 嗅 (xiù, "to smell"). The Wikisource edition flags an Extension-B variant glyph (𠺗, U+20E97) as an alternate form here; we encode the source's BMP character 噢 as it stands and note the variant transparently, rather than substitute the astral form. The reading xiù follows the sense; it is flagged for editorial confirmation.