原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
含詞賦 With rhapsody
喜有玉麒麟 A Jade Unicorn Among Men
登山每與青雲合，嘯月渾如白雪勻。登山每与青云合，啸月浑如白雪匀。
真是蛟龍離海島，人間喜有玉麒麟。真是蛟龙离海岛，人间喜有玉麒麟。
逐句解 Line by line
登山每與青雲合，嘯月渾如白雪勻。
登山每与青云合，啸月浑如白雪匀。
Climbing the hills it meets the blue clouds every time; baying at the moon it is all of a whiteness with the snow.
嘯月 is to cry out at the moon, ordinarily said of a tiger or an ape, borrowed here for a horse. 勻 is even, of a piece — the white coat and the snow are one colour.
真是蛟龍離海島，人間喜有玉麒麟。
真是蛟龙离海岛，人间喜有玉麒麟。
Truly a sea-dragon come off its island; a joy that men have a unicorn of jade.
The last line says more than the speaker knows. 蛟龍 is the sea-dragon, and this horse is precisely that — the third prince of the Western Sea dragon king, transformed. 麒麟 is the beast whose appearance marks a sage or a coming age, so calling a horse one is the highest compliment available. Both figures are conventional in horse verse and both happen to be true here.
A commander with no supernatural knowledge whatever reaches for the two grandest clichés in the language and lands on the literal fact. The horse really is a dragon off an island.
This is a device the novel uses often and never explains: a character speaks figuratively about something and is accidentally exact. Tripitaka called the old woman Venerable Bodhisattva; the commander calls the horse a sea-dragon.