Eloisa sits alone in the convent's dark cells, overcome by a sudden and unexpected tumult of emotions.

Eloisa intercepts a letter Abelard wrote to someone else and feels her long-dormant love violently reawaken.

Eloisa begins writing a letter to Abelard, scrawling his name repeatedly and weeping over each inscription.

Eloisa recalls first meeting Abelard as his student, captivated by his brilliant mind, happy eyes, and voice.

Eloisa and Abelard's platonic friendship gradually grows into deep romantic love over time.

Eloisa and Abelard share a period of complete mutual happiness, both fully 'possessing and possessed' by the other.

Eloisa's uncle sends violent men to attack and castrate Abelard as punishment for their relationship.

Eloisa enters the convent on the solemn day she calls terrible, with both herself and Abelard as 'victims' at the altar.

Eloisa discovers that gazing at the Cross during prayer still turns her thoughts toward Abelard rather than God.

Eloisa cries out 'Assist me, Heav'n!' begging God to free her from her consuming love for Abelard.

Eloisa searches desperately for a way to 'lose the sin, yet keep the sense' of loving Abelard.

Eloisa dreams of Abelard's phantom reaching for her, only for it to slip away from her arms as unkindly as he did in life.

Eloisa suddenly wishes Abelard would return and 'assist the fiends' to pull her away from God entirely.

Eloisa commands Abelard to 'come not, write not, think not once of me,' hoping total separation will bring peace.

Eloisa predicts that a future poet will one day write about their doomed love and soothe her suffering ghost.

Eloisa sits confined in a convent, overwhelmed by emotions she cannot suppress, and intercepts a letter from Abelard that reignites her dormant passion. She begins writing to him, reliving the story of how their intellectual friendship became a consuming love affair. Their happiness is shattered when Eloisa's uncle sends men to violently attack and castrate Abelard, and Eloisa is forced into the convent as a nun. Inside the convent, she finds no spiritual relief, as every prayer and every glance at the Cross leads her thoughts back to Abelard rather than God. She swings violently between crying out for divine help and wishing Abelard would pull her back into the world of earthly passion. The poem closes with Eloisa imagining her own death, Abelard at her funeral, and a future poet who will one day immortalize their doomed love.

The core arc of Eloisa's love, loss, and unending longing.

Eloisa's vow of silence seals Abelard's name behind her lips, making even speaking it a forbidden act.

Eloisa observes the pale-eyed nuns keeping cold vigil and contrasts their stone-like stillness with her own inner turmoil.

Eloisa reads in the intercepted letter of the 'sad variety of woe' Abelard has suffered because of their relationship.

Eloisa recalls preferring to be Abelard's mistress rather than his wife, rejecting the honor and wealth marriage would bring.

Eloisa and Abelard share a love she compares to heaven on earth, where 'love' was 'liberty' and 'nature' was 'law.'

Abelard sends Eloisa to the convent following their secret marriage, forcing their physical separation.

Eloisa thinks of Abelard's monastery and imagines it bright with irradiated shrines, peaceful and light unlike her own convent.

Eloisa calls Abelard her 'father, brother, husband, friend,' listing every role he held in her life at once.

Eloisa looks at the pines, grottos, and lakes surrounding the convent and finds the entire world appears sad.

Eloisa declares her religious commitment is false and that she remains entirely enslaved by her love for Abelard.

Eloisa envisions a peaceful nun whose 'spotless mind' enjoys 'eternal sunshine,' a state of grace Eloisa cannot reach.

Eloisa describes her restless nights in the convent, where her soul grows 'loose and unbounded' in sleep.

Eloisa pictures herself kneeling penitent at the altar and briefly believes genuine repentance may be within reach.

Eloisa contemplates their dust mingling in one shared grave after death, finding morbid comfort in love surviving the grave.

Eloisa imagines a future couple walking past her and Abelard's shared grave and weeping for the doomed lovers.

Eloisa's daily existence in the convent is one of enforced silence and dim, cheerless architecture that mirrors her inner desolation. She observes the cold, statue-like nuns around her and feels entirely unlike them, her heart still warm and rebellious against spiritual submission. Through memory she revisits the pleasures of her relationship with Abelard — the sense of heaven on earth their union gave her — and mourns how completely that life has been taken from her. She reflects on Abelard's monastery with longing, imagining it as bright and peaceful while her own convent remains steeped in darkness and sorrow. Her piety feels entirely hollow, her prayers hijacked by grief, and she briefly glimpses the possibility of genuine repentance only to be swept back into longing. The pool ends with Eloisa looking past her own death, imagining future lovers weeping at a shared grave and finding bitter comfort in the idea that love might survive even in dust.

Convent life, memory, and the layered details of a love lost.

Eloisa realizes Abelard's name is both 'for ever sad' and 'for ever dear,' capturing the contradiction at the heart of her grief.

Eloisa recalls that love first approached her disguised 'under Friendship's name' before she recognized it as passion.

Abelard convinces Eloisa that loving him is 'no sin,' framing their passion as a spiritual rather than transgressive experience.

Eloisa and Abelard secretly marry with her uncle Canon Fulbert, a clergyman at Notre Dame cathedral, officiating the ceremony.

Eloisa and Abelard's child Astrolabe is placed into the care of Abelard's sister before both parents enter religious life.

Eloisa and Abelard permanently separate, each entering a religious order, following the violent attack on Abelard.

Eloisa urges Abelard to write back soon to 'speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul' across their separation.

Eloisa perceives a 'Black Melancholy' settling over the entire convent landscape, making even nature reflect her despair.

Eloisa acknowledges that her love for Abelard is a 'forbidden fire' she cannot repent because she genuinely cannot regret it.

Eloisa reflects that Abelard's castration grants him a 'cool suspense from pleasure and from pain' that she herself is denied.

Eloisa recognizes that her tears during prayer are shed entirely for Abelard, revealing her piety as thoroughly hollow.

Eloisa feels herself stretched 'far as pole from pole' between her love for God and her undiminished love for Abelard.

Eloisa hears the wind and believes it carries the comforting voice of a deceased nun who also once lost a lover.

Eloisa exclaims 'O Death, all-eloquent!' realizing that death alone reveals how deeply humans are attached to those they love.

Pope closes the poem by implying he too has known unrequited love, stating that only those who feel it most can paint it best.

From the first lines of the poem, Eloisa is caught in a web of contradictions — Abelard's name is both eternally sad and eternally dear, and no act of writing or weeping can dissolve her attachment to him. The backstory of their relationship is filled with pivotal choices: the secret marriage, the birth and surrender of their child, and their permanent entry into religious life after the attack. Inside the convent, each moment of apparent spiritual progress is undone by a sudden revelation of how deeply her love persists — she sees her tears at prayer are not for God, that her love is a forbidden fire she cannot repent, and that she is stretched between two irreconcilable poles. The poem's late turns are its most devastating: a wind that sounds like a dead nun's voice, a vision of Abelard at her deathbed, and a sudden exclamation that only death reveals what humans truly love. Pope closes by stepping briefly into the poem himself, suggesting he has written from his own experience of unrequited longing and that only those who have truly felt love can honor it in art.