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 o' day or under the peak-faced moon
In cabin or dance-hall or dive mucklucks or patent shoon

On velvet tundra or virgin peak by glacier 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 kind of cuss and his mind was mighty sot
On a dinky with flowers 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 with frills and a tombstone epigram

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

passed away and at last one day came a squaw with a story strange
Of a line of traps way back of the Bighorn range
Of a little hut by the great divide and a white man stiff and
Lying there by his self and I figured it must be Bill

So I thought of the contract I'd made with him and I took 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 it on the sleigh
Then I up my team of dogs and was off at dawn of day

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

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

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

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

North aye North through a accurst shunned by the scouring brutes
And all I was my own harsh word and the whine of the malamutes
Till at last I came to a 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 winding-sheet sheathing each wall
Ice on the ice on the bed ice gleaming over all
Sparkling ice on the dead man's chest glittering ice in his
Ice on his fingers ice in his heart ice in his glassy

Hard as a log and like a frog with his arms and legs outspread
I at the coffin I'd brought for him and I gazed at the gruesome dead
And at last I spoke Bill liked his joke but still goldarn his
A man had to consider 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 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 kind but I never felt so blue
As I sat there at that stiff and studying what I'd do
Then I rose and I kicked off the husky dogs that were nosing round
And I lit a roaring fire in the 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
at last I said it ain't no use he's froze too hard to thaw
He's obstinate and he lie straight so I guess I got to saw

So I off poor Bill's arms and legs and I laid him snug and straight
In the little coffin he hisself with the dinky silver plate
And I came nigh 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 contract was in a narrow grave and
And there he's waiting the Great Clean-up when the the Judgment sweep
And I smoke my pipe and I meditate in the light of the Sun
And I wonder if they was the awful things I done

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