Oscar Wilde
Whole text
- p.409
- Is it thy will that I should wax and wane,
Barter my cloth of gold for hodden grey,
And at thy pleasure weave that web of pain
Whose brightest threads are each a wasted day? - Is it thy will—Love that I love so well—
That my Soul's House should be a tortured spot
Wherein, like evil paramours, must dwell
The quenchless flame, the worm that dieth not? - Nay, if it be thy will I shall endure,
And sell ambition at the common mart,
And let dull failure be my vestiture,
And sorrow dig its grave within my heart. - Perchance it may be better so—at least
I have not made my heart a heart of stone,
Nor starved my boyhood of its goodly feast,
Nor walked where Beauty is a thing unknown. - Many a man hath done so; sought to fence
In straitened bonds the soul that should be free,
Trodden the dusty road of common sense,
While all the forest sang of liberty. - Not marking how the spotted hawk in flight
Passed on wide pinion through the lofty air,
To where the steep untrodden mountain height
Caught the last tresses of the Sun God's hair. - Or how the little flower he trod upon,
The daisy, that white-feathered shield of gold,
Followed with wistful eyes the wandering sun
Content if once its leaves were aureoled. - But surely it is something to have been
The best belovèd for a little while,
To have walked hand in hand with Love, and seen
His purple wings flit once across thy smile. - Ay! though the gorgèd asp of passion feed
On my boy's heart, yet have I burst the bars,
Stood face to face with Beauty, known indeed
The Love which moves the Sun and all the stars!
APOLOGIA
Document details
The TEI Header
File description
Title statement
Title (uniform): Apologia
Author: Oscar Wilde
Responsibility statement
Electronic edition compiled and proof-read by: Margaret Lantry
Funded by: University College, Cork
Edition statement
2. Second draft.
Extent: 1232 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: 2010
Distributor: CELT online at University College, Cork, Ireland.
CELT document ID: E850003-079
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 (ed), The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde (Chicago 1982).
- 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, A 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 (1991). ‘Apologia’. In: Plays, Prose Writings and Poems. London: Everyman’s Library, p. 409.
You can add this reference to your bibliographic database by copying or downloading the following:
@incollection{E850003-079,
author = {Oscar Wilde},
title = {Apologia},
booktitle = {Plays, Prose Writings and Poems},
address = {London},
publisher = {Everyman's Library},
date = {1991},
pages = {409}
}
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 NSGMLS.
Normalization: The electronic text represents the edited text.
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: 1881
Language usage
- The text is in English. (en)
Keywords: literary; poetry; 19c
Revision description
(Most recent first)
- 2010-12-01: File updated; conversion script run; new wordcount made. (ed. Beatrix Färber)
- 2009-10-27: Keywords added. (ed. Beatrix Färber)
- 2005-08-25: Normalised language codes and edited langUsage for XML conversion (ed. Julianne Nyhan)
- 2005-08-04T14:28:29+0100: Converted to XML (conversion Peter Flynn)
- 1997-10-17: Text proofed; structural mark-up inserted. (ed. Margaret Lantry)
- 1997-10-15: Header created. (ed. Margaret Lantry)
- 1997-10-: Text parsed using NSGMLS. (ed. Margaret Lantry)
- 1997: Text captured. (ed. Donnchadh Ó Corráin)