Irregular Verbs

A highly amusing subject today, you're thinking? Well yes. Try the following anonymous verses:

SALLY SALTER.

Sally Salter, she was a young teacher, that taught,
And her friend Charley Church was a preacher, who praught;
Though his friends all declared him a screecher, who scraught.

His heart, when he saw her, kept sinking, and sunk,
And his eyes, meeting hers, kept winking, and wunk;
While she, in her turn, fell to thinking, and thunk.

He hastened to woo her, and sweetly he wooed,For his love for her grew—to a mountain it grewed,And what he was longing to do, then he doed.

In secret he wanted to speak, and he spoke:To seek with his lips what his heart had long soke;So he managed to let the truth leak, and it loke.

He asked her to ride to the church and they rode;They so sweetly did glide, that they both thought they glode,And they came to the place to be tied, and were tode.

Then "Homeward," he said, "let us drive," and they drove,As soon as they wished to arrive they arrove;For whatever he couldn't contrive she controve.

The kiss he was dying to steal, then he stole,At the feet where he wanted to kneel, there he knole,And he said, "I feel better than ever I fole."

So they to each other kept clinging, and clung,While Time his swift circuit was winging, and wung;And this was the thing he was bringing, and brung:

The man Sally wanted to catch, and had caught—That she wanted from others to snatch, and had snaught,Was the one that she now liked to scratch, and she scraught.

And Charley's warm love began freezing and froze,While he took to teasing, and cruelly toseThe girl he had wished to be squeezing and squoze.

"Wretch!" he cried, when she threatened to leave him, and left,"How could you deceive me, as you have deceft?"And she answered, "I promised to cleave, and I've cleft!"