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.