Luyện nghe bài hát Ballad Of Basphemous Bill

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

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

For was a dainty kind of cuss and his mind was mighty sot
On a patch with flowers and grass in a civilized boneyard lot
And where he died or how he it didn't matter 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 very night down in the Tenderloin
Then I painted a three-foot slab of pine here lies poor MacKie
And I it up on my cabin wall and waited for Bill to die

Years passed away and at last one day came a squaw with a story
Of a long-deserted line of way back of the Bighorn range
Of a little hut by the great divide and a white man stiff and
Lying there by his lonesome self and I 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 with the silver plate picked out for hisself
And I packed it full of grub and hooch and I slung it on the
Then I harnessed up my of dogs and was off at dawn of day

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

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

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

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

North aye through a land accurst shunned by the scouring brutes
And all I heard was my own harsh word and the whine of the
Till at last I came to a squat built in the side of a hill
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 over all
Sparkling ice on the dead man's chest ice in his hair
Ice on his fingers ice in his heart ice in his glassy

Hard as a log and trussed a frog with his arms and legs outspread
I gazed at the coffin I'd brought for him and I 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 stood in an Arctic hut in the shadow of the Pole
With a little six by three and a grief you can't control
Have you sat by a frozen corpse that looks at you with a grin
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 there at that stiff and studying what I'd do
Then I and I kicked off the husky dogs that were nosing 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 days but it didn't no good
His arms and his legs stuck out like pegs as if they made of wood
Till at last I said it ain't no use he's too hard to thaw
obstinate and he won't lie straight so I guess I got to saw

So I sawed off poor Bill's arms and and I laid him snug and straight
In the little coffin he picked hisself the dinky silver plate
And I came near to shedding a tear as I nailed him safely down
I stowed him away 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 Clean-up when the the Judgment sluice-heads sweep
And I smoke my 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 often think of poor old Bill and how he was to saw