Eugene Onegin ( without commentary )

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Chapter One

Flowers, love, the country, idleness, ye fields! my soul is vowed to you. I'm always glad to mark the difference between Onegin and myself, lest a sarcastic reader or else some publisher of complicated calumny, collating here my traits, repeat thereafter shamelessly that I have scrawled my portrait like Byron, the poet of pride – as if we were no longer able to write long poems on any other subject than ourselves!

In this connection I'll observe: all poets are friends of fancifying love. It used to happen that dear objects I'd dream of, and my soul preserved their secret image; the Muse revived them later: thus I, carefree, would sing a maiden of the mountains, my ideal, as well as captives of the Salgir's banks. From you, my friends, at present not seldom do I hear the question: 'For whom does your lyre sigh? To whom did you, among the throng of jealous maidens, dedicate its strain?