"She could not too much give her approbation

Unto an Empress, who preferred young men

Whose age, and what was better still, whose nation

And climate, stopped all scandal (now and then);—

At home it might have given her some vexation;

But where thermometers sink down to ten,

Or five, or one, or zero, she could never

Believe that Virtue thawed before the river."[KB]