The Chaos
Gerald Nolst Trenité

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,

On hiccough, thorough, slough and through.
Beware of heard, a dreadful word,
That looks like beard but sounds like bird.

And dead: It's said like bed, not bead
For goodness' sake, don't call it deed!

Watch out for meat and great and threat...
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.
A moth is not the moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, nor broth in brother.

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 them up -- and goose and choose.

A dreadful language? Why, sakes alive!
I'd learned to speak it when I was five.

And yet, to write it, the more I tried, I hadn't learned it at fifty-five.
Gerard Nolst Trenité