Luyện nghe bài hát Ballad Of Basphemous Bill

I took a contract to bury the body of blasphemous Bill
Whenever or whatsoever the manner of death he die
Whether he die in the light o' day or under the peak-faced
In cabin or camp or dive 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 battle murder or sudden wealth by pestilence hooch or
I on the Book I would follow and look till I found my tombless dead

For Bill was a dainty kind of and his mind was mighty sot
On a dinky patch with and grass in a civilized boneyard lot
And where he died or how he died it didn't a damn
So long as he had a grave with frills and a epigram

So I promised him and he paid the in good cheechako coin
Which the same I blowed in that very night in the Tenderloin
Then I painted a three-foot slab of pine here lies poor Bill
And I hung it up on my wall and waited for Bill to die

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

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

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

When the stove-pipe smoke breaks off and the sky is weirdly lit
And the feel of a bit of steel burns like a red-hot spit
When the mercury is a frozen ball and the frost-fiend stalks to
Well it was just like that that day I set out to look for Bill

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

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

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

Ice white ice like a sheathing each smoke-grimed wall
Ice on the ice on the bed ice gleaming over all
Sparkling ice on the dead chest glittering ice in his hair
Ice on his fingers ice in his heart ice in his stare

Hard as a log and trussed like a frog his arms and legs outspread
I gazed at the coffin I'd for him and I gazed at the gruesome dead
And at last I Bill liked 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
a little coffin six by three and a grief you can't control
Have you ever sat by a frozen corpse that looks at you with a
And seems to say you may try all day but you'll 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 dogs that were nosing round about
And I lit a fire in the stove and I started to thaw Bill out

Well I thawed and I for thirteen days but it didn't seem no good
His arms and his legs stuck out like pegs as if they 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 straight so I 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 hisself with the silver plate
And I came near to shedding a tear as I nailed him safely down
Then I stowed him away in my sleigh and I started back to town

So I buried him as the contract was in a grave and deep
And there waiting the Great Clean-up when the the Judgment sluice-heads sweep
And I smoke my and I meditate in the light of the Midnight Sun
And I wonder if they was the awful things I done

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