Here and there the creeper and the vine pull and drag at each other; the whole stream is thick with jade grass mixed among fragrant orchid.

牽又扯 gives the vines two verbs of tugging and lets them fight, which is more animate than a plant needs to be — the mountain will not stay still even in its undergrowth.

Glittering strange rocks; sheer-pared crags and cliffs.

Two doubled words in four characters. 磷磷 is the glint off wet stone; 削削 comes from the verb to pare or whittle, so the peaks are described as if something had cut them down to an edge.

Foxes and badgers run in packs; monkeys and apes go about in troops making mischief.

狐狢 pairs the fox with a badger-like animal, and 猴猿 pairs two words for monkey. 頑 closes the line on the rhyme and means to play or to be unruly — the same character that described the beasts as fierce and wild a few clauses back, used in a lighter sense here.

The traveller is fretting already at how steep and dangerous it is, and what is to be done, when the old road bends and doubles back as well.

還 is huán here, to turn back or come round, not the hái of still or yet — and the rhyme proves it. This set-piece closes eleven rhyme clauses on the same sound — 班 寒 頑 竿 餐 嵐 關 蘭 岩 頑 — and then this one. Read hái the last close falls outside the set and the poem is ten for eleven; read huán and it is eleven for eleven. 灣還 is a road winding and coming round on itself.