POEM 1 POEM 2
I take it you already know
When the English tongue we speak
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Why is break not rhymed with weak?
Others may stumble but not you
Won't you tell me why it's true
On hiccough, thorough, slough and through.
We say sew, but also few?
Well done! And now you wish perhaps,
And the maker of a verse
To learn of less familiar traps?
Cannot rhyme his horse with worse?
Beard is not the same as heard,
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
Cord is different from word,
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
Cow is cow and low is low,
And dead, it's said like bed, not bead-
Shoe is never rhymed with toe.
for goodness' sake don't call it 'deed'!
Think of hose and dose and lose,
Watch out for meat and great and threat
And think of goose and yet of choose,
(they rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
Think of comb and tomb and bomb,
Doll and roll and home and some.
A moth is not a moth in mother,
And since pay is rhymed with say,
Nor both in bother, broth, or brother,
Why not paid with said I pray?
And here is not a match for there,
Think of blood and food and good;
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
Mould is not pronounced like could.
And then there's doze and rose and lose-
Why is done, but gone and lone -
Just look them up- and goose and choose,
Is there any reason known?
And cork and work and card and ward
To sum it up, it seems to me
And font and front and word and sword,
Sounds and letters don't agree.
And do and go and thwart and cart-
Come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd learned to speak it when I was five!
And yet to write it, the more I sigh,
I'll not learn how 'til the day I die.