To write a sonnet doth Juana press me, I've never found me in such stress or pain; A sonnet numbers fourteen lines, 'tis plain, And three are gone, ere I can say, God bless me! I thought that spinning rhymes might sore oppress me, Yet here I'm midway in the last quatrain; And if the foremost tercet I can gain, The quatrains need not any more distress me. To the first tercet I have got at last, And travel through it with such right good will, That with this line I've finished it, I ween; I'm in the second now, and see how fast The thirteenth line runs tripping from my quill; Hurrah, 'tis done! Count if there be fourteen!
From Lope de Vega's "Nina de Plata".
One of my all-time favourite sonnets from a prolific Spanish poet/playwright.