沖天占地 Piercing Heaven And Gripping Earth
卻說行者將身一縱，早見一座高山阻住霧角。即按雲頭，立在那巔峰之上，仔細觀看，好山：却说行者将身一纵，早见一座高山阻住雾角。即按云头，立在那巅峰之上，仔细观看，好山：
逐句解 Line by line
The tale goes that Pilgrim gave his body a single bound, and had already sighted a high mountain standing in his way and cutting off the reach of the mist.
將 is the little word that brings 身 forward in front of its verb. 一縱, one bound, is the same verb the poem used two passages ago for clearing the Taihang range — the boast is now being cashed, and the narrative does not remark on it.
He pressed his cloud down at once, stood on the topmost peak, looked closely — a fine mountain:
仔 is zǐ inside 仔細, carefully, not the zǎi the character carries alone. 好山 and its colon end the prose and open the set-piece; a tag like this is never separated from the poem it announces.
It thrusts to heaven and grips the ground; it blocks the sun and breeds the cloud.
Four verbs in eight characters, and the whole rhapsody is their expansion: the next two lines take these four claims in the order given and enlarge them two to a line. 占 is zhàn, to occupy, not the zhān of telling fortunes.
Where it thrusts to heaven, sharp summits stand up one behind another; where it grips the ground, far ridges run away and away.
The edition cuts these apart with a semicolon and they are read as one sentence here — seven characters against seven, built on the identical frame: the verb phrase repeated, then 處, then a noun and a doubled adjective. Neither half outdoes the other, which is what makes them a pair rather than a sequence.
The mountain piece opens by making four claims in eight characters and then spends its whole length proving them one at a time, in order. Thrust to heaven and grip the ground come first and are taken up immediately; block the sun and breed cloud wait a line and are taken up next. It is built like an argument.
And it does not rhyme. Nine sentences end on nine unrelated sounds and no scheme runs through them. What holds the piece together instead is the repeated frame and the doubled adjectives, which arrive at roughly one a line — the ear is given pattern where it expected rhyme.