I heard him curse his own misery, while he hugged the chains that galled him:
For well had experience declared the bitterness of guilty pleasure,
But habit, with its iron net, involved him in its folds.
Behind him lowered the thunder-storm, which the caldron of his wickedness had brewed;
Before him was the smooth steep cliff, whose base is ruin and despair.
So he rushed madly on, and tried to forget his being:
The noisy revel and the low debauch, and fierce excitement of play,
With dreary interchange of palling pleasures, filled the dull round of existence:
Memory was to him as a foe, so he flew for false solace to the wine-cup,
And stunned his enemy at even; but she rent him as a giant in the morning.