Luyện nghe bài hát The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill

I a contract to bury the body of blasphemous Bill MacKie,
Whenever, wherever or the manner of death he die
Whether he die in the light o' day or the peak-faced moon;
In cabin or dance-hall, camp or dive, mucklucks or patent
On velvet or virgin peak, by glacier, drift or draw;
In muskeg hollow or gloom, by avalanche, fang or claw;
By battle, or sudden wealth, by pestilence, hooch or lead
I swore on the Book I follow and look till I found my tombless dead.

For Bill was a dainty kind of cuss, and his mind was sot
On a dinky patch with flowers and in a civilized bone-yard lot.
And where he died or how he died, it matter a damn
So long as he had a grave with and a tombstone "epigram".
So I promised him, and he paid the price in good coin
(Which the I blowed in that very night down in the Tenderloin).
Then I painted a three-foot slab of "Here lies poor Bill MacKie",
And I hung it up on my wall and I waited for Bill to die.

Years passed away, and at last one day came a squaw 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 of the contract I'd made with him, and I took down from the shelf
The swell black box with the silver he'd picked out for hisself;
And I packed it full of and "hooch", and I slung it on the sleigh;
Then I harnessed up my of dogs and was off at dawn of day.

You know what like in the Yukon wild when it's sixty-nine below;
When the wriggle their purple heads through the crust of the pale blue snow;
the pine-trees 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 red-hot
When the mercury is a frozen ball, and the frost-fiend to kill
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 through that blank and bitter
Half dazed, crazed in the winter wild, with its grim heart-breaking woes,
And the ruthless for a grip on life that only the sourdough knows!
North by the compass, North I river and peak and plain
Passed like a dream I slept to lose and I to dream again.

River and plain and mighty peak--and who stand unawed?
As their summits blazed, he could undazed at the foot of the throne of God.
North, aye, North, 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 of a hill,
And I burst in the door, and on the floor, frozen to death, lay Bill.

Ice, ice, like a winding-sheet, sheathing each smoke-grimed wall;
Ice on the stove-pipe, ice on the bed, ice gleaming 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 I spoke: "Bill liked his joke; but still, goldarn his eyes,
A man had to consider his mates in the way he goes and dies."

Have you ever stood in an Arctic hut in the of the Pole,
With a little coffin six by and a grief you can't control?
Have you ever sat by a frozen corpse that looks at you a grin,
And that seems to say: "You may try all day, but you'll jam me in"?
I'm not a man of the quitting kind, but I never felt so
As I sat there gazing at that stiff and studying 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 started to thaw out.

Well, I thawed and thawed for days, but it didn't seem no good;
His arms and legs out like pegs, as if they was made of wood.
Till at last I said: "It ain't no use--he's froze too 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 legs, and I him snug and straight
In the little coffin he hisself, with the dinky silver plate;
And I came nigh near to shedding a tear as I nailed him safely
Then I him away in my Yukon sleigh, and I started back to town.

So I him as the contract was in a narrow grave and deep,
And there he's waiting the Great Clean-up, when the Judgment sweep;
And I smoke my and I meditate in the light of the Midnight Sun,
And sometimes I if they was, the awful things I done.
And as I sit and the talks, expounding of the Law,
I often of poor old Bill--and how hard he was to saw.