A reading of an adapted version of Gerard Nolst Trenité's "The Chaos" (1922). Dearest creature in Creation, Studying English pronunciation, I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse. It will keep you, Susy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy; Tear in eye your dress you'll tear, So shall I! Oh, hear my prayer, Pray, console your loving poet, Make my coat look new, dear, sew it! 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); Made has not the sound of bade; Say - said, pay - paid, laid, but plaid. Now I surely will not plague you With such words as vague and ague, But be careful how you speak, Say break, steak, but bleak and streak, Previous, precious, fuschia, via; Pipe, snipe, recipe and choir, Cloven, oven; how and low; Script, receipt; shoe, poem, toe. Hear me say, devoid of trickery: Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore, Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles; Exiles, similes, reviles; Wholly, holly; signal, signing; Thames, examining, combining; Scholar, vicar and cigar, Solar, mica, war and far. From "desire" desirable - admirable from "admire"; Lumber, plumber; bier, but brier; Chatham, brougham; renown, but known, Knowledge, done, but gone and tone, One, anernone; Balmoral; Kitchen, lichen; laundry,. laurel, Gertrude, German; wind and mind; Scene, Melpomene; mankind; Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather, Reading, Reading, heathen, heather ...
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