The _Dragontea_ was written while Lope was in the household of the Marqués de Malpica, whence he passed as secretary to the lettered Marqués de Sarriá, best known as Conde de Lemos, and as Cervantes' patron. In 1599 he published his devout and graceful poem, _San Isidro_, in honour of Madrid's patron saint. Popular in subject and execution, the _San Isidro_ enabled him to repeat in verse the triumph which he had achieved with the prose of the _Arcadia_. From this day forward he was the admitted pontiff of Spanish literature. His marriage with Juana de Guardo probably dates from the year 1600. An example of Lope's art in manipulating the sonnet-form is afforded by Longfellow's Englishing of _The Brook_:— "_Laugh of the mountain! lyre of bird and tree! Pomp of the meadow! mirror of the morn! The soul of April, unto whom are born The rose and jessamine, leaps wild in thee! Although where'er thy devious current strays, The lap of earth with gold and silver teems, To me thy clear proceeding brighter seems Than golden sands that charm each shepherd's gaze. How without guile thy bosom, all transparent As the pure crystal, lets the curious eye Thy secrets scan, thy smooth, round pebbles count! How, without malice murmuring, glides thy current! O sweet simplicity of days gone by! Thou shun'st the haunts of man, to dwell in limpid fount!_" Two hundred sonnets in Lope's _Rimas_ are thought to have been issued separately in 1602: in any case, they were published that year at the end of a reprint of the _Angélica_. They include much of the writer's sincerest work, earnest in feeling, skilful and even distinguished as art. One sonnet of great beauty—_To the Tomb of Teodora Urbina_—has led Ticknor into an amusing error often reproduced. He cites from it a line upon the "heavenly likeness of my Belisa," notes that this name is an anagram of Isabel (Lope's first wife), and pronounces the performance a lament for the poet's mother-in-law. The Latin epitaph which follows it contains a line,— "_Exactis nondum complevit mensibus annum_,"— showing that the supposed mother-in-law died in her first year. Manifestly the sonnet refers to the writer's daughter, and, as always happens when Lope speaks from his paternal heart, is instinct with a passionate tenderness.