好雨 A Fine Rain
好雨！真個是：好雨！真个是：
逐句解 Line by line
A fine rain! Truly it was:
好雨！ ‘a fine rain!’ (exclamation) closing on 真個是 (‘truly it was’), the verse-tag introducing the rain 賦. The two tags together form the non-verse lead.
Whispering and scattering, dense and heavy.
瀟瀟灑灑 / 密密沉沉 — two reduplicated intensives (light-and-scattered / dense-and-heavy) that will each be taken up in turn. The 賦's opening figure.
Whispering and scattering, like stars falling from heaven's edge;
瀟瀟灑灑 developed: 如天邊墜落星辰 ‘like stars falling from the sky's edge’: 落 luò (‘fall’, the settled reading; dump-verified). A simile of the light, wide-flung rain.
dense and heavy, like the sea's mouth hung upside down, its billows rolling.
密密沉沉 developed: 似海口倒懸浪滾: 似 sì (GLOBAL); 倒懸 ‘hung upside down’: 倒 dào (invert/reverse). The companion simile of the heavy, torrential rain.
At first the drops were the size of fists; then it came as if jars were emptied and basins upturned.
起初時如拳大小 ‘at first, fist-sized’; 甕潑盆傾 ‘jars poured out, basins upturned’ (甕 wèng ‘jar’; 傾 qīng ‘pour’). The rain's crescendo. No NT graphs.
It flooded the ground to a drake's-crown green, washed the high hills to a Buddha's-head blue.
鴨頂綠 ‘drake's-crown green’ and 佛頭青 ‘Buddha's-head blue’ — two named pigments (佛 fó, GLOBAL) figuring the water-washed colours of ground and hill.
In the gullies the water flew, a thousand zhàng of jade; in the ravine-springs the waves swelled, ten thousand threads of silver.
溝壑…澗泉: 千丈玉 ‘a thousand zhàng of jade’ (丈 zhàng, the length-unit, untranslated); 波漲 ‘waves swelled’: 漲 zhǎng (rise/swell). 萬條銀 ‘ten thousand threads of silver’. A parallel of flying and swelling water.
At the three-forked crossroads it filled before the eye; in the nine-bend brook it slowly leveled.
三叉路口看看滿 ‘the crossroads filled as one watched’: 看 kàn (看看 ‘gradually’). 九曲溪中 中 zhōng ‘in the nine-bend brook’. The flood rising and settling.
This was the divine dragons' aid in Tripitaka's ordeal — they pulled down the River of Heaven and poured it below.
唐僧有難 ‘the Tang Monk in an ordeal’: 難 nàn (tribulation), not nán. 扳倒天河往下傾: 扳 bān (‘pull’); 倒 dǎo (‘pull down, topple’ — distinct from the 倒懸 dào above in this same 賦). The 賦 closes by naming the rain the dragons' service to the pilgrimage.
The rain 賦 is a bravura descriptive set-piece — the two opening intensives (light-scattered, dense-heavy) developed each into its own simile, the crescendo from fist-sized drops to upturned basins, the washed colours of ground and hill, the flying and swelling water. Within a single rhapsody the graph 倒 carries both its readings: 倒懸 (dào, ‘hung upside down’) in the second couplet and 扳倒 (dǎo, ‘pulled down’) in the last — a compact illustration of the polyphone's range.
For all its splendour, the 賦 ends by naming the rain what it is: the dragons' aid ‘in Tripitaka's ordeal.’ The magnificence is a set-up. The next passage will reveal that this borrowed water, poured from the River of Heaven itself, is powerless against the fire it was called to quench.