An old bronze idol sits among dusty curios in a shop window, watching the modern crowds pass through an ancient square. Dressed in gold and jade, he seems to be waiting for temple gongs and conches that stopped sounding long ago. He does not know his temple has been gone for a thousand years, reduced to a mound of dust and bamboo. The speaker describes him with sympathy and a touch of sadness, imagining the idol half dreaming of a lost “poppy-land” and the worshippers who once knelt before him. Though he cannot feel human loss, there is something wistful in the way he watches the crowds that never stop for him. The poem creates a quiet, melancholy mood, mixing reverence for the past with the loneliness of being forgotten.
An Idol in a Shop Window — Summary
Old Lohan peers through the dusty glass, From a jumble of curios quaint and rare; And he watches the hurrying crowds that pass The whole day long, through the ancient square.
Wrapped in his robe of gold and jade, Here by the window he patiently waits For the sound that the gongs and the conches made, In the days of old at the temple gates.
He heaves no sighs and he sheds no tears, For his heart is bronze, and he does not know That his temple has been for a thousand years But a mound of dust where the bamboos grow.
So here he sits through the nights and the days, And the sun goes up and down the sky; But he often looks with a wistful gaze At the crowds that always pass him by.
And his eyes half closed in a mystic dream Of his poppy-land of long ago, Turn back to the shores of the sacred stream And the kneeling throng he used to know.
But he sometimes smiles as he sees the crowd Of human folks that pass him by; Then he wraps himself in his mystic shroud,-- And the sun once more goes down the sky.