Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin - Eugene Onegin. Chapter 1. First 5 stanzas. lyrics

I ``My uncle -- high ideals inspire him; but when past joking he fell sick, he really forced one to admire him -- and never played a shrewder trick. Let others learn from his example! But God, how deadly dull to sample sickroom attendance night and day and never stir a foot away! And the sly baseness, fit to throttle, of entertaining the half-dead: one smoothes the pillows down in bed, and glumly serves the medicine bottle, and sighs, and asks oneself all through: "When will the devil come for you?"'' II Such were a young rake's meditations -- by will of Zeus, the high and just, the legatee of his relations -- as horses whirled him through the dust. Friends of my Ruslan and Lyudmila, without preliminary feeler let me acquaint you on the nail with this the hero of my tale: Onegin, my good friend, was littered and bred upon the Neva's brink, where you were born as well, I think, reader, or where you've shone and glittered! There once I too strolled back and forth: but I'm allergic to the North...1 III After a fine career, his father had only debts on which to live. He gave three balls a year, and rather promptly had nothing left to give. Fate saved Evgeny from perdition: at first Madame gave him tuition, from her Monsieur took on the child. He was sweet-natured, and yet wild. Monsieur l'Abbé, the mediocre, reluctant to exhaust the boy, treated his lessons as a ploy. No moralizing from this joker; a mild rebuke was his worst mark, and then a stroll in Letny Park. IV But when the hour of youthful pa**ion struck for Evgeny, with its play of hope and gloom, romantic-fashion, it was goodbye, Monsieur l'Abbé. Eugene was free, and as a dresser made London's dandy his professor. His hair was fashionably curled, and now at last he saw the World. In French Onegin had perfected proficiency to speak and write, in the mazurka he was light, his bow was wholly unaffected. The World found this enough to treat Eugene as clever, and quite sweet. V We all meandered through our schooling haphazard; so, to God be thanks, it's easy, without too much fooling, to pa** for cultured in our ranks. Onegin was a**essed by many (critical judges, strict as any) as well-read, though of pedant cast. Unforced, as conversation pa**ed, he had the talent of saluting felicitously every theme, of listening like a judge-supreme while serious topics were disputing, or, with an epigram-surprise, of kindling smiles in ladies' eyes.