Writing a Sonnet about Writing a Sonnet (Shakespearean)

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At night I lay in my bed, thinking of

Those fourteen lines, rhymes, syll’bles of ten;

I struggle writing ‘bout the normal love,

Or ‘bout the battles that occur to men.

Three quatrains, diff’rent by a common theme,

With every line containin’ i’mbic pentam;

I only follow William Shakespeare’s scheme,

Not Petrarch’s or Sir Spenser’s rhyming plan.

But now I am on the last of the three,

I have found this to be an easy test;

These sonnets are now making sense to me,

But the last couplet’s forever a pest:

This po’try only calls for some int’rest

And with it you’ll have many smarts possessed.