Laudator Temporis Acti

William Barnes (1801-1886), Learning, from Poems, Partly of Rural Life (In National English) (London: J.R. Smith, 1846), pp. 125-127:

Heavenly source of guiltless joy!
  Holy friend through good and ill;
When all idle pleasures cloy,
  Thou cans't hold my spirit still.

Give the idle their delights,
  Wealth unblest, and splendor vain;
Empty days and sleepless nights,
  Seeming bliss in real pain.

Give the sensual their joys;
  Wild excitement, heartless glee,
Madd'ning wine and giddy noise;
  I will spend my hours with thee.

Take me to some still abode,
  Underneath some woody hill;
By some timber-skirted road,
  By some willow-shaded rill.

Where along the rocky brook,
  Flying echoes sweetly sound,
And the hoarsely-croaking rook
  Builds upon the trees around.

Take me to some lofty room
  Lighted from the western sky,
Where no glare dispels the gloom
  Till the golden eve is nigh,

Where the works of searching thought,
  Chosen books, may still impart
What the wise of old have taught,
  What has tried the meek of heart.

Books in long-dead tongues, that stirr'd
  Living hearts in other climes;
Telling to my eyes, unheard,
  Glorious deeds of olden times.

Books that purify the thought,
  Spirits of the learned dead.
Teachers of the little taught,
  Comforters when friends are fled.

Learning! source of guiltless joy!
  Holy friend through good and ill,
When all idle pleasures cloy,
  Thou cans't hold my spirit still.

Ozias Leduc, The Young Student