Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation, I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer. Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the latter, how it’s written) Now I surely will not plague you With such words as plaque and ague. But be careful how you speak: Say break and steak, but bleak and streak, Cloven, oven, how and low, Script, receipt, show, poem and toe. Hear me say, devoid of trickery, Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore, Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, Exiles, similes and revile, Scholar, vicar, and cigar, Solar, mica, war and far, One, anemone, Balmoral, Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel, Gertrude, German, wind and mind, Scene, Melpomene, mankind. Billet does not rhyme with ballet Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. Blood and flood are not like food, Nor is mould like should and would. Viscous, viscount, load and broad, Toward, to forward, to reward. And your pronunciation’s Ok When you correctly say croquet, Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, Friend and fiend, alive and live. Ivy, privy, famous, clamour And enamour thyme with hammer. River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, Doll and roll and some and home. Stranger does not rhyme with anger, Neither does devour with clangour. Souls but foul, haunt but aunt, Font, front, wont, want, grand, grant, Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger, And then singer, ginger, linger, Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gauge and gauge, Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.