I care not a straw with whom I have dined,
Though a family dinner's not much to my mind,
And a proser's a plague upon earth.
"But where, my dear sprite, for this age have you been?
Have you plunged in the Danube, or danced on the Seine?
Or have taken in Lisbon your station?
Or have flapped over Windsor your butterfly-wings,
O'er its bevy of beauties, and courtiers, and kings—
The wonders and wits of the nation?"
"No; of all climes for folly, Old England's the clime;