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W.B. Yeats (1865–1939).  The Wind Among the Reeds.  1899.

A Poet to his Beloved

I BRING you with reverent hands  
The books of my numberless dreams;  
White woman that passion has worn  
As the tide wears the dove-gray sands,  
And with heart more old than the horn          
That is brimmed from the pale fire of time:  
White woman with numberless dreams  
I bring you my passionate rhyme.

History, taught for a directly and immediately useful purpose to pupils and the teachers of pupils, is one of the necessary features of a sound education in democratic citizenship. A book containing such sound teaching, even if without any literary quality, may be as useful to the student and as creditable to the writer as a similar book on medicine. I am not slighting such a book when I say that, once it has achieved its worthy purpose, it can be permitted to lapse from human memory as a good book on medicine, which has outlived its usefulness, lapses from memory. But the historical work which does possess literary quality may be a permanent contribution to the sum of man's wisdom, enjoyment, and inspiration. The writer of such a book must add wisdom to knowledge, and the gift of expression to the gift of imagination.

- Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919).  History as Literature.  1913