Luyện nghe bài hát Ballad Of Basphemous Bill

I took a contract to the body of blasphemous Bill MacKie
Whenever wherever or whatsoever the of death he die
Whether he die in the light o' day or under the moon
In cabin or dance-hall camp or mucklucks or patent shoon

On tundra or virgin peak by glacier drift or draw
In muskeg hollow or canyon gloom by avalanche or claw
By murder or sudden wealth by pestilence hooch or lead
I swore on the I would follow and look till I found my tombless dead

For Bill was a dainty kind of cuss and his was mighty sot
On a patch with flowers and grass in a civilized boneyard lot
And where he died or how he died it matter a damn
So as he had a grave with frills and a tombstone epigram

So I promised him and he paid the price in cheechako coin
Which the same I blowed in that night down in the Tenderloin
Then I painted a slab of pine here lies poor Bill MacKie
And I hung it up on my cabin wall and for Bill to die

Years away and at last one day came a squaw with a story strange
Of a long-deserted line of traps way back of the Bighorn
Of a little hut by the great and a white man stiff and still
Lying by his lonesome self and I figured it must be Bill

So I thought of the contract I'd made with him and I down from the shelf
The swell black box the silver plate he'd picked out for hisself
And I packed it of grub and hooch and I slung it on the sleigh
Then I up my team of dogs and was off at dawn of day

You know what it's like in the Yukon when it's sixty-nine below
When the ice-worms wriggle their purple heads through the crust of the blue snow
When the pine crack like little guns in the silence of the wood
And the icicles hang down like tusks under the hood

When the smoke breaks sudden off and the sky is weirdly lit
And the careless feel of a bit of steel burns like a spit
When the mercury is a frozen ball and the frost-fiend to kill
Well it was just like that that day when I set out to for Bill

Oh the awful hush that seemed to crush me on every hand
As I blundered blind with a trail to find through blank and bitter land
Half dazed half crazed in the winter wild with its grim heartbraking
And the ruthless strife for a grip on that only the sourdough knows

North by the compass I pressed river and peak and plain
Passed like a dream I to lose and I waked to dream again
River and plain and mighty and who could stand unawed
As their summits blazed he could stand undazed at the of the throne of God

aye North through a land accurst shunned by the scouring brutes
And all I heard was my own harsh word and the of the malamutes
Till at last I came to a cabin squat built in the side of a
And I burst in the door and on the floor frozen to death lay Bill

Ice white ice like a winding-sheet sheathing smoke-grimed wall
Ice on the stove-pipe ice on the bed ice gleaming all
Sparkling ice on the man's chest glittering ice in his hair
Ice on his fingers ice in his heart ice in his glassy

Hard as a log and trussed like a frog with his arms and legs
I at the coffin I'd brought for him and I gazed at the gruesome dead
And at last I spoke Bill his joke but still goldarn his eyes
A man had ought to his mates in the way he goes and dies

Have you ever stood in an Arctic hut in the shadow of the
With a little coffin six by and a grief you can't control
Have you ever sat by a frozen corpse that at you with a grin
And that seems to say you may try all day but never jam me in

I'm not a man of the quitting but I never felt so blue
As I sat gazing at that stiff and studying what I'd do
Then I rose and I kicked off the husky dogs that were round about
And I lit a roaring fire in the stove and I to thaw Bill out

Well I thawed and I thawed for thirteen but it didn't seem no good
His and his legs stuck out like pegs as if they were made of wood
Till at last I it ain't no use he's froze too hard to thaw
He's obstinate and he won't lie so I guess I got to saw

So I sawed off poor Bill's arms and legs and I laid him and straight
In the little coffin he picked with the dinky silver plate
And I nigh near to shedding a tear as I nailed him safely down
Then I stowed him in my Yukon sleigh and I started back to town

So I buried him as the was in a narrow grave and deep
And there he's waiting the Great Clean-up when the the sluice-heads sweep
And I my pipe and I meditate in the light of the Midnight Sun
And sometimes I wonder if they was the things I done

And as I sit and the parson talks of the Law
I think of poor old Bill and how hard he was to saw