Damaetas
Damaetas - meaning Summary
Youth Consumed by Vice
The poem sketches a brief moral portrait of Damaetas, a youth morally corrupted despite his age. It traces his early mastery of deceit, fickle appetites, and reckless indulgence in female company and worldly vice. Though experienced in sin, he grows disillusioned: pleasures that once thrilled him become burdens. The poem moves from portrait to moral turn, showing conflicting passions and the eventual recognition that former delights have become his bane.
Read Complete AnalysesIn 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; Woman his dupe, his heedless friend a tool; Old in the world, though scarcely broke from school; Damaetas 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.
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