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;