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Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde by Oscar Wilde
page 76 of 110 (69%)
the worker's expression of joy in his work? And not joy merely--that is
a great thing yet not enough--but that opportunity of expressing his own
individuality which, as it is the essence of all life, is the source of
all art. 'I have tried,' I remember William Morris saying to me once, 'I
have tried to make each of my workers an artist, and when I say an artist
I mean a man.' For the worker then, handicraftsman of whatever kind he
is, art is no longer to be a purple robe woven by a slave and thrown over
the whitened body of a leprous king to hide and to adorn the sin of his
luxury, but rather the beautiful and noble expression of a life that has
in it something beautiful and noble.--_The English Renaissance of Art_.




THE ARTIST


ONE evening there came into his soul the desire to fashion an image of
_The Pleasure that abideth for a Moment_. And he went forth into the
world to look for bronze. For he could think only in bronze.

But all the bronze of the whole world had disappeared, nor anywhere in
the whole world was there any bronze to be found, save only the bronze of
the image of _The Sorrow that endureth for Ever_.

Now this image he had himself, and with his own hands, fashioned, and had
set it on the tomb of the one thing he had loved in life. On the tomb of
the dead thing he had most loved had he set this image of his own
fashioning, that it might serve as a sign of the love of man that dieth
not, and a symbol of the sorrow of man that endureth for ever. And in
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