海晏河清一統朝 The Sea Calm and the River Clear
早又金雞唱曉。國王即登殿設朝。但見：早又金鸡唱晓。国王即登殿设朝。但见：
眾文武百官朝罷，又宣：「光祿寺安排十二日會喜佳筵。今日且整春罍，請駙馬在御花園中款玩。」众文武百官朝罢，又宣：「光禄寺安排十二日会喜佳筵。今日且整春罍，请驸马在御花园中款玩。」
逐句解 Line by line
Early again the golden cock crowed up the dawn, and the king went straight to the hall and opened court. And this was the sight:
Six characters for sunrise, and the novel is off again. 金雞唱曉, the golden cock singing the dawn, is a set phrase, and the cock is the one in the sun that starts the day for everybody. 但見 — and this was the sight — is the standard cue that a descriptive showcase is coming. The edition marks the four lines that follow as verse.
The palace opens its casements and the purple vapour stands high; the wind blows the royal music through the blue of the sky.
The quatrain — four lines of seven characters each — opens on things that move: vapour rising, wind carrying sound. Nobody has come in yet. 御樂 is the royal music, and 樂 is yuè in that sense — the same character as the lè of pleasure in this chapter's own title, doing an entirely different job.
The cloud shifts, the leopard-tail banners stir; the sun strikes the dragon-head carvings and the jade pendants swing.
The 豹尾 banner and the 螭頭 carvings are both real palace furniture: a leopard-tail standard closed an imperial procession, and the hornless dragons were carved on the balustrades of the audience steps.
A fine mist of fragrance deepens the green of the palace willows; a light dew freshens the garden flowers into beauty.
The only line of the four with nothing official in it. After vapour, banners and jade pendants, the poem stops for two plants and some weather.
They cry the mountain acclamation and dance in their ranks, a thousand officers drawn up: the sea calm and the river clear, one court over all.
山呼舞蹈 is the court ritual, not a metaphor: the assembled officials called out the acclamation of long life and performed a set series of prostrations and steps. It is where the English idea of hailing a monarch and the Chinese one line up almost exactly. 海晏河清 — the sea calm and the Yellow River running clear — is a phrase still in use for a country perfectly at peace, and it rests on a very old joke: the Yellow River is never clear, so the day it runs clear is the day everything is finally right. Hold on to it. The line comes back before this chapter is over, in a poem Tripitaka himself writes.
When the civil and military officers had finished at court, the king proclaimed further: "Let the Court of Imperial Entertainments prepare the wedding feast for the twelfth. For today, set out the spring wine and let the Prince Consort take his ease in the royal garden."
Back to the business of the chapter, which is catering. The 光祿寺 really did exist and really did do this: it was the office that ran the imperial kitchens and the state banquets, and it appears in this chapter three times, always in a work order. 春罍 is the spring wine-jar, a big-bellied ritual vessel. The king is saying: bring out the good stuff.
A dawn, a court, and a work order. The chapter has settled into a rhythm of showcase and administration, and the two are not as separate as they look — the poem is about a state in perfect order, and what immediately follows is that state arranging a party.
The quatrain is a compliment to a monarch, and a conventional one. It says the kingdom is at peace, the officials are in their ranks, the omens are good. Every line of it is true and every line of it is beside the point, because the thing actually happening in this well-ordered kingdom is that its princess has been replaced and nobody has noticed.
The novel does not underline this. It simply puts the poem where it is, and lets the reader hold it against what Pilgrim said in the dark an hour ago about a shadow on the king's face.