Can you read in English?

The poem below is full of sound/symbol surprises in English.

I take it you already know.
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Some falter, (but I think not you).
On hiccough, thorough, tough 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;
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 these up, with goose and choose.
Now, 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? Sakes alive!
I’d mastered it when I was five!
-- Anonymous