Before the cliff, ancient trees, their frosted bark sluicing rain, forty spans round; outside the gate, dark pines, their inky colour piercing the sky two thousand chǐ up.

Two lines with the identical build — four characters of place, seven of description — which is why they are set here as one unit rather than two. 霜皮溜雨 is bark so smooth with age that rain runs straight off it. The measurements are the usual poetic inflation: a 尺, chǐ, is about 32 centimetres, so two thousand of them is 640 metres of pine tree, which is roughly twice the Eiffel Tower and not intended to be measured.

Wild cranes in pairs come often to the cave mouth to dance on the clear wind; mountain birds two by two call all the white day long from the branch tips.

Again a matched pair, four and seven on both sides. 雙雙 and 對對 both mean in pairs, doubled up as reduplications so the line itself comes in twos — the form acting out its own content.

Clumps of yellow creeper hang like ropes, rows of misty willow droop like gold.

Here is a reading that the machinery gets backwards, and the parallel is what settles it. 簇簇 is clumps, so its partner 行 must be háng, a row — the two characters of 行行 are the only place in this entire chapter where that reading is right, against sixty-eight where it is not.