I take it you already know
Of tough and bought and cough and dough
Others may stumble but not you
On thorough, plough, enough and through
Well done! And now you wish perhaps
To learn of less familiar traps.
Beware of heard: a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sound like bird.
And dead: it's said like bed not bead
For goodness sake don't call it deed.
Watch out of meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear, for bear and pear.
And then there's dose and rose and lose
-Just look at them up - and goose and choose
And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go. then thwart and cart.
Come, come! I've hardly made a start.
A dreadful language? Why man alive!
I'd mastered it when I was five.
And yet to write, the more I tried,
1 hadn't learnt at fifty-five.