According to Santos Torroella [Los números del tiempo. Antología del reloj y las horas en la poesía castellana. Madrid: Roberto Carbonell Blasco, 1953, p. 3], the first poem in Spanish to treat the image of the clock is a riddle by Juan de Mena [1411-1456]:

XOLER

¿Qué es el cuerpo sin sentido
que concierta nuestras vidas
sin vivir?
Muévese sin ser movido;
hace cosas muy sentidas
sin sentir.
Este nunca está dormido,
mas siempre mide medidas
sin medir;
tiene el seso tan perdido
que [é]l mismo se da heridas
sin herir.

The poem consists of a number of ingenious oxymora based on conceptual contrasts between the movement of the clock and its lifelessness. Associating animation with life, the poet plays on the paradox that the clock has many lifelike functions but remains lifeless. It moves without feeling movement or being moved emotionally, creates anguish at passing time without feeling, measures without measuring anything spatially visible, and, in a final pun, strikes without injuring itself.

(Daniel L. Heiple: Mechanical Imagery in Spanish Golden Age Poetry. Potomac, Maryland: Studia Humanitatis, 1983, p. 152.)