A Puzzler Poem

I take it you already know
of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh 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 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, broth in brother.
Dear and fear, but pear and bear,
And ear and air match hear and there,
And then there's dose and rose and lose --
Just look 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 on! I've hardly made a start.

A dreadful language? Man alive,
I'd mastered it when I was five!

(by anomymous, From New Century American English: Living and Learning in the west written by Naomi Woronov)

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