It's a little long, so just read as long as it helps.
(As a warning, it might challenge your pronunciation skills if English is not your mother language. The poem is also a little old so there are some outdated forms of words, and alternate ways of spelling. Ex. "rime" = "rhyme".)Enjoy!
THE CHAOS
Dearest creature in Creation,
Studying English pronunciation,
- I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse
and worse
Make your head with heat grow
- dizzy:
Tear in eye your dress you'll tear,
So shall I! Oh, hear my prayer,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
- Just compare heart, beard and
heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
(Mind the latter, how it's written).
- Made has not the sound of bade,
Say said, pay-paid, laid, but
plaid.
With such words as vague and ague,
- But be careful how you speak,
Say break, steak, but bleak and
streak.
Pipe, snipe, recipe and choir,
- Cloven, oven; how and low,
Script, receipt; shoe, poem, toe.
Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore,
- Typhoid; measles, topsails, aisles;
Exiles, similes, reviles;
Thames; examining, combining;
- Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war, and far.
- from "admire."
- Chatham, brougham; renown, but
known.
One, anemone; Balmoral;
Kitchen, lichen; laundry, laurel;
- Gertrude, German; wind and
mind.
Scene, Melpomene, mankind;
Reading, Reading, heathen, heather.
- This phonetic labyrinth
Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch,
ninth, plinth.
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet;
- Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Which is said to rime with "darky."
- Viscous, viscount, load, and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward,
When you say correctly croquet;
- Rounded, wounded, grieve, and
sieve;
Friend and fiend, alive, and live;
Rachel, ache, moustache; eleven,
- We say hallowed, but allowed;
People, leopard, towed, but
vowed.
Between mover, plover, Dover,
- Leeches, breeches; wise, precise;
Chalice, but police, and lice.
Principle, disciple; label;
- Petal, penal, and canal;
Wait, surmise, plait, promise; pal.
Rime with "shirk it" and "beyond it".
- But it is not hard to tell,
Why it's pall, mall, but Pall Mall.
Timber, climber; bullion, lion,
- Worm and storm; chaise, chaos,
and chair;
Senator, spectator, mayor.
And enamour rime with 'hammer'.
- P*ssy, hussy, and possess.
Desert, but dessert, address.
Hoist, in lieu of flags, left pennants.
- River, rival; tomb, bomb, comb;
Doll and roll and some and home.
Neither does devour with clangour.
- Soul, but foul and gaunt, but aunt;
Font, front, wont; want, grand,
and, grant.
- finger,
- Real, zeal; mauve, gauze, and
gauge;
Marriage, foliage, mirage, age.
Nor does fury sound like bury.
- Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth;
Job, Job; blossom, bosom, oath.
We say actual, but victual,
- Seat, sweat; chaste, caste; Leigh,
eight, height;
Put, nut; granite, but unite.
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
- Dull, bull; Geoffrey, George; ate,
late;
Hint, pint; Senate, but sedate;
Science, conscience, scientific;
- Tour, but our, and succour, four;
Gas, alas, and Arkansas!
Psalm; Maria, but malaria;
- Youth, south, southern; cleanse
and clean;
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Dandelion with battalion,
- Sally with ally; yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay!
Neither, leisure, skein, receiver.
- Never guess--it is not safe;
We say calves, valves, half, but
Ralf*! (*note: nowadays spelled 'Ralph')
Crevice and device, and eyrie;
- Face but preface, but efface,
Phlegm, phlegmatic; *ss, glass,
bass.
Ought, out, joust, and scour, but
- scourging;
Ear but earn; and wear and tear
Do not rime with here, but 'ere'.
Hyphen, roughen, nephew, Stephen;
- Monkey, donkey; clerk, and jerk;
Asp, grasp, wasp; and cork and
work.
Is a paling, stout and spikey;
- Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing "groats" and saying "grits"?
Strewn with stones, like rowlock,
- gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict, and indict!
Saying lather, bather, father?
- Finally: which rimes with "enough".
Though, through, plough, cough,
hough, or tough?
My advice is--give it up!
- by Charivarius (G.N. Trenité)
