Wednesday, August 20, 2008

And Now for a Lazy Return

I read this recently. It was in a book that im not going to name because i dont want anyone else to suffer the mix of emotions i did when reading it.

T. S. W in a letter to The Sunday Times in January 1965:
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 suit and straight and debt)
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth or 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,
And cork and work, and card and ward,
And font and front, and word and sword,
And do and go, and thwart and cart –
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I’d mastered it when I was five!

The English language is so cool.
Yes you can label me a nerd for that.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

and here was i thinking that t.s.E only wrote boring, deep annoying crap about sordid streets...

that poem's orsome!!!!

(ask eric bout the name)

alyssa said...

T.S.W, not E.
or was that on purpose??

Anonymous said...

i assumed that, because W is next to E on the qwerty keyboard you had made a typo, and i figured that it would be tse cos we're currently doing ts* at school

does this mean that i should now be wiping egg off my face

alyssa said...

nice reasoning, but yes you should probably be wiping the egg off.

(u forgot a question mark at the end =D)

Eric said...

poetry. i just threw up in my mouth a litle bit. but its ok, i have dr pepper here to cheer me up. he's a nice fellow.
anyway, ninja person, poetry is bad. got it? airy fairy badness.
alyssa, well, literature nerd you are =P

Anonymous said...

ninja doesnt need question mark

besides, the egg is currently wiping the ninja off its face....