The Doer Of Good
Oscar Wilde
Whole text
It was night-time and He was alone.
And He saw afar-off the walls of a round city and went towards the city.
And when He came near He heard within the city the tread of the feet of joy, and the laughter of the mouth of gladness and the loud noise of many lutes. And He knocked at the gate and certain of the gatekeepers opened to Him.
And He beheld a house that was of marble and had fair pillars of marble before it. The pillars were hung with garlands, and within and without there were torches of cedar. And He entered the house.
And when He had passed through the hall of chalcedony and the hall of jasper, and reached the long hall of feasting, He saw lying on a couch of sea-purple one whose hair was crowned with red roses and whose lips were red with wine.
And He went behind him and touched him on the shoulder and said to him, “Why do you live like this?”
And the young man turned round and recognised Him, and made answer and said, “But I p.231 was a leper once, and you healed me. Now else should I live?”
And He passed out of the house and went again into the street.
And after a little while He saw one whose face and raiment were painted and whose feet were shod with pearls. And behind her came, slowly as a hunter, a young man who wore a cloak of two colours. Now the face of the woman was as the fair face of an idol, and the eyes of the young man were bright with lust.
And He followed swiftly and touched the hand of the young man and said to him, “Why do you look at this woman and in such wise?”
And the young man turned round and recognised Him and said, “But I was blind once, and you gave me sight. At what else should I look?”
And He ran forward and touched the painted raiment of the woman and said to her, “Is there no other way in which to walk save the way of sin?”
And the woman turned round and recognised Him, and laughed and said, “But you forgave me my sins, and the way is a pleasant way.”
And He passed out of the city.
And when He had passed out of the city p.232 He saw seated by the roadside a young man who was weeping.
And He went towards him and touched the long locks of his hair and said to him, “Why are you weeping?”
And the young man looked up and recognised Him and made answer, “But I was dead once and you raised me from the dead. What else should I do but weep?”
Document details
The TEI Header
File description
Title statement
Title (uniform): Poems in Prose
Title (extended): The Doer of Good
Author: Oscar Wilde
Responsibility statement
Electronic edition compiled and proof-read by: Margaret Lantry
Funded by: University College, Cork
Edition statement
1. First draft, revised and corrected.
Extent: 1330 words
Publication statement
Publisher: CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts: a project of University College, Cork
Address: College Road, Cork, Ireland—http://www.ucc.ie/celt
Date: 1997
Date: 2008
Distributor: CELT online at University College, Cork, Ireland.
CELT document ID: E850003-017
Availability: Available with prior consent of the CELT programme for purposes of academic research and teaching only.
Notes statement
There is not as yet an authoritative edition of Wilde's works.
Source description
Select editions
- The writings of Oscar Wilde (London; New York: A. R. Keller & Co. 1907) 15 vols.
- Robert Ross (ed), The First Collected Edition of the Works of Oscar Wilde (London: Methuen & Co. 1908). 15 vols. Reprinted Dawsons: Pall Mall 1969.
- Complete works of Oscar Wilde (Glasgow: HarperCollins, 1994).
Select bibliography
- 'Notes for a bibliography of Oscar Wilde', Books and book-plates (A quarterly for collectors) 5, no. 3 (April 1905), 170-183.
- Karl E. Beckson, The Oscar Wilde encyclopedia (New York: AMS Press 1998). AMS Studies in the nineteenth century 18.
- Richard Ellmann; John Espey, Oscar Wilde: two approaches: papers read at a Clark Library seminar, April 17, 1976 (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California 1977).
- Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde at Oxford: a lecture delivered at the Library of Congress on March 1, 1983 (Washington, DC: Library of Congress 1984).
- Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde: a biography (London: Hamilton 1987).
- Juliet Gardiner, Oscar Wilde: a life in letters, writings and wit (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1995).
- Frank Harris, Oscar Wilde, including My memories of Oscar Wilde, by George Bernard Shaw and an introductory note by Lyle Blair (London: Robinson, 1992).
- Rupert Hart-Davis (ed), Selected letters of Oscar Wilde (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1979).
- Rupert Hart-Davis (ed), More letters of Oscar Wilde (London: Murray 1985).
- Vyvyan Beresford Holland, Oscar Wilde: a pictorial biography (London: Thames & Hudson 1960).
- H. Montgomery Hyde, Oscar Wilde: a biography (London: Methuen 1977).
- Andrew McDonnell, Oscar Wilde at Oxford: an annotated catalogue of Wilde manuscripts and related items at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, including many hitherto unpublished letters, photographs and illustrations (A. McDonnell 1996). Limited edition of 170 copies.
- Stuart Mason, Bibliography of Oscar Wilde (London: E. G. Richards 1907). Also pubd. New York 1908, London 1914 in 2 vols. Repr. of 1914 edition: New York: Haskell House 1972.
- E. H. Mikhail, Oscar Wilde: an annotated bibliography of criticism (London: Macmillan 1978). Also pubd. Totowa NJ: Rowman & Littlefield 1978.
- Thomas A. Mikolyzk, Oscar Wilde: an annotated bibliography (Westport CT: Greenwood Press 1993). Bibliographies and indexes in world literature, 38.
- Norman Page, An Oscar Wilde chronology (London: Macmillan 1991).
- Hesketh Pearson, The Life of Oscar Wilde (London 1946).
- Richard Pine, The thief of reason: Oscar Wilde and modern Ireland (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1996).
- Horst Schroeder, Additions and corrections to Richard Ellmann's Oscar Wilde (Braunschweig: H. Schroeder 1989)
The edition used in the digital edition
Wilde, Oscar (1913). ‘The Doer of Good’. In: Essays and Lectures. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., pp. 230–232.
You can add this reference to your bibliographic database by copying or downloading the following:
@incollection{E850003-017,
author = {Oscar Wilde},
title = {The Doer of Good},
booktitle = {Essays and Lectures},
address = {London},
publisher = {Methuen \& Co. Ltd.},
date = {1913},
pages = {230–232}
}
Encoding description
Project description: CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts
Sampling declarations
All the editorial text with the corrections of the editor has been retained.
Editorial declarations
Correction: Text has been checked, proof-read and parsed using SGMLS.
Normalization: The electronic text represents the edited text.
Quotation: Direct speech is marked q.
Hyphenation: The editorial practice of the hard-copy editor has been retained.
Segmentation: div0=the whole text.
Interpretation: Names of persons (given names), and places are not tagged. Terms for cultural and social roles are not tagged.
Reference declaration
The n attribute of each text in this corpus carries a unique identifying number for the whole text.
The title of the text is held as the first head element within each text.
div0 is reserved for the text (whether in one volume or many).
Profile description
Creation: By Oscar Wilde (1854–1900).
Date: 1894
Language usage
- The text is in English. (en)
Keywords: literary; prose; 19c; story
Revision description
(Most recent first)
- 2010-09-07: Conversion script run; new SGML and HTML files created. (ed. Beatrix Färber)
- 2008-07-31: Keywords added; file validated. Minor changes made to header; new wordcount made. (ed. Beatrix Färber)
- 2005-08-25: Normalised language codes and edited langUsage for XML conversion (ed. Julianne Nyhan)
- 2005-08-04T14:25:53+0100: Converted to XML (conversion Peter Flynn)
- 1997-10-22: Text parsed using SGMLS. (ed. Margaret Lantry)
- 1997-10-08: Text proofed; text spell-checked; structural mark-up inserted. (ed. Margaret Lantry)
- 1997-10-08: Header created. (ed. Margaret Lantry)
- 1997: Text captured. (ed. Donnchadh Ó Corráin)