Classic Poem

Guide of our wayward youth, whose golden tongue
Is Rome's delight and boast, if I am wrong
In making haste to live whilst poor and young,
Forgive me; others dally all too long;
These gather gold beyond their fathers' dreams,
Ancestral busts their crowded halls might fill —
To me my smoke-stained cot more pleasant seems,
The earth's wild verdure and the running rill,
A comely slave, a kind but simple wife,
Nights of soft sleep and days unmarred of strife.