Lope de Vega was onto this long before the rest of us.
SUDDEN SONNET
Lope de Vega
Viola tells me I must write a sonnet!
I've never known such deep anxiety!
They say that it takes fourteen lines. I'm on it!
Just by mocking, I've completed three.
I thought that I could never even start it,
but here I am, commencing quatrain two!
Pretty soon I'll move on to the tercet
and then these dicey quatrains will be through.
Now tercet number one is what I'm facing.
I must be doing something right, I'd say,
since with this line the tercet's done. I'm racing
to wrap up tercet two in a similar way.
Now here comes line thirteen for steady pacing.
And line fourteen concludes this bit of play.
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