height,
    Is so already consecrate. 
    Fairfax I know, and long ere this
    Have marked the youth, and what he is;
    But can he such a rival seem,
    For whom you heaven should disesteem? 
    Ah, no! and ’twould more honour prove
    He your devoto were than Love. 
    Here live beloved and obeyed,
    Each one your sister, each your maid,
    And, if our rule seem strictly penned,
    The rule itself to you shall bend. 
    Our Abbess, too, now far in age,
    Doth your succession near presage. 
    How soft the yoke on us would lie,
    Might such fair hands as yours it tie! 
    Your voice, the sweetest of the choir,
    Shall draw heaven nearer, raise us higher,
    And your example, if our head,
    Will soon us to perfection lead. 
    Those virtues to us all so dear,
    Will straight grow sanctity when here;
    And that, once sprung, increase so fast,
    Till miracles it work at last.’”

What reply was given by the heiress to these arguments, and others of a still more seductive hue, the poet does not tell, but turns to the eager lover who asks, What should he do?  He hints that a nunnery is no place for a virtuous maid, and that the nuns (unlike himself, I hope) are only thinking of her property.  He complains that though the Court has authorised him to use either peace or force, the nuns still stand upon their guard.

    “Ill-counselled women, do you know
    Whom you resist or what you do?”

Using a most remarkable poetic licence, the poet refers to the fact that this barred-out lover is to be the progenitor of the great Lord Fairfax.

    “Is not this he, whose offspring fierce
    Shall fight through all the universe;
    And with successive valour try
    France, Poland, either Germany,
    Till one, as long since prophesied,
    His horse through conquered Britain ride?”

The lover determines to take the place by assault.  It was not a very heroic enterprise, as Marvell describes it.

    “Some to the breach, against their foes,
    Their wooden Saints in vain oppose;
    Another bolder, stands at push,
    With their old holy-water brush,
    While the disjointed Abbess threads
    The jingling chain-shot of her beads;
    But their loud’st cannon were their lungs,
    And sharpest weapons were their tongues. 
    But waving these aside like flies,
    Young Fairfax through the wall does rise. 
    Then the unfrequented vault appeared,
    And superstition, vainly feared;
    The relicks false were set to view;
    Only the jewels there were true,
    And truly bright and holy Thwaites,
    That weeping at the altar waits. 
    But the glad youth away her bears,
    And to the Nuns bequeathes her tears,
    Who guiltily their prize bemoan,
    Like gypsies who a child have stol’n.”