Classic Poem

To far Salonae now your way you wend,
Whom loyalty and love of right attend,
And power that never seeks its purse to fill,
But has fair virtue for its handmaid still.
O happy dwellers in that golden land,
Your ruler will return with empty hand,
And you with tearful joy on his last day
Will seek pretexts to make him longer stay.
But I, who long to see you once again,
Go now my way to Gaul, and savage Spain:
BuTon each page from Tagus' wave I write,
My pen shall Macer's honoured name indite.
And so when you peruse the bards of old,
May I a favoured place among them hold,
And of that goodly band of poets see
None save Catullus taken before me.