Luyện nghe bài hát The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill

I a contract to bury the body of blasphemous Bill MacKie,
Whenever, wherever or whatsoever the manner of he die
Whether he die in the o' day or under the peak-faced moon;
In cabin or dance-hall, camp or dive, mucklucks or patent
On velvet tundra or peak, by glacier, drift or draw;
In muskeg or canyon gloom, by avalanche, fang or claw;
By battle, murder or sudden wealth, by pestilence, hooch or
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 and grass in a civilized bone-yard lot.
And he died or how he died, it didn't matter 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
(Which the same I blowed in that very night in the Tenderloin).
Then I painted a slab of pine: "Here lies poor Bill MacKie",
And I hung it up on my cabin and I waited for Bill to die.

Years passed away, and at last one day a squaw with a story strange,
Of a long-deserted line of traps 'way of the Bighorn 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 contract I'd made with him, and I took down from the
The swell box with 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 harnessed up my team of and was off at dawn of day.

You know it's like in the Yukon wild when it's sixty-nine below;
When the ice-worms wriggle their purple through the crust of the pale blue snow;
When the pine-trees crack like little guns in the of the wood,
And the icicles hang down like tusks under the parka
When the stove-pipe smoke sudden off, and the sky is weirdly lit,
And the careless feel of a bit of steel burns a red-hot spit;
When the mercury is a ball, and the frost-fiend stalks 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 blank and bitter land;
Half dazed, crazed in the winter wild, with its grim heart-breaking woes,
And the ruthless strife for a grip on life that 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 stand undazed at the foot of the of God.
North, aye, North, through a land accurst, shunned by the brutes,
And all I heard was my own word and the whine 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 there on the floor, to death, lay Bill.

Ice, white ice, like a winding-sheet, each smoke-grimed wall;
Ice on the stove-pipe, ice on the bed, ice over all;
ice on the dead 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 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 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 hut in the shadow of the Pole,
With a little coffin six by three and a 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 you'll jam me in"?
I'm not a man of the quitting kind, but I never so blue
As I sat there gazing at that stiff and studying 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 for thirteen days, but it didn't seem no good;
His arms and legs stuck out like pegs, as if was made of wood.
Till at last I said: "It ain't no use--he's froze too hard to
obstinate, and he won't 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 near to shedding a tear as I nailed him safely
Then I stowed him away in my Yukon sleigh, and I started to town.

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