There, with its great red hands on the knees parted beneath
a white and flowing robe, sat Power — his deity; and a silent prayer, far too
instinctive and inevitable to be expressed in words, rose through the stagnant,
dusty atmosphere:
“O great image that put me here, knowing as thou must the
failings of my fellow-beings, give me power to see that they do right; let me
provide for them the moral and the social diet they require.
For, since I have
been here, I have daily, hourly, humbly felt more certain of what it is they
really want; more assured that, through thy help, I am the person who can give
it them.
O great image, before thou didst put me here I was not quite certain
about anything, but now, thanks be to thee, everything is daily clearer and more
definite; and I am less and less harassed by my spirit. Let this go on, great
image, till my spirit is utterly at rest, and I am cold and still and
changeless as this marble corridor.”
John Galsworthy - Power (1908)
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