Ozymandias on the High Plains

OZYMANDIAS

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
— Percy Bysshe Shelley

This poem often comes to mind when I shoot pictures of old, abandoned buildings. Someone had a dream. Someone had hopes. Someone had plans for the future that included this building and the land it stands on. But something happened to those plans. And the people who owned the building and the land walked away.

What happened to those people? Why did their dreams die, their plans fail?

I will never have an answer. In the open door of an abandoned house, only questions and silence remain.

And the lone and level plains stretch far away.