Eugene Onegin ( without commentary )

VII

Lacking the lofty passion not to spare life for the sake of sounds, an iamb from a trochee- 4 no matter how we strove-he could not tell apart. Theocritus and Homer he disparaged, but read, in compensation, Adam Smith, and was a deep economist: 8 that is, he could assess the way a state grows rich, what it subsists upon, and why it needs not gold 12 when it has got the simple product. His father could not understand him, and mortgaged his lands.