In law an infant, and in years a boy,   In mind a slave to every vicious joy;      From every sense of shame and virtue wean’d;      In lies an adept, in deceit a fiend;   Versed in hypocrisy, while yet a child;   Fickle as wind, of inclinations wild;      Women his dupe, his heedless friend a tool;      Old in the world, though scarcely broke from school;   Damętas ran through all the maze of sin,   And found the goal when others just begin:      Even still conflicting passions shake his soul,      And bid him drain the dregs of pleasure’s bowl;   But, pall’d with vice, he breaks his former chain,   And what was once his bliss appears his bane.