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."

The poet then goes on to glorify the results of this union and to
describe happy days spent at Nunappleton by the descendants of Isabella
Thwaites.

"At the demolishing, this seat
To Fairfax fell, as by escheat;
And what both nuns and founders willed,
'Tis likely better thus fulfilled.
For if the virgin proved not theirs,
The cloister yet remained hers;
Though many a nun there made her vow,
'Twas no religious house till now.
From that blest bed the hero came
Whom France and Poland yet does fame;
Who, when retired here to peace,
His warlike studies could not cease;
But laid these gardens out, in sport,
In the just figure of a fort,
And with five bastions it did fence,
As aiming one for every sense.
When in the east the morning ray
Hangs out the colours of the day,
The bee through these known alleys hums,
Beating the dian with its drums.
Then flowers their drowsy eyelids raise,
Their silken ensigns each displays,
And drie