Luyện nghe bài hát The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill

I took a contract to bury the of blasphemous Bill MacKie,
Whenever, or whatsoever the manner of death he die
Whether he die in the light o' day or under the moon;
In cabin or dance-hall, camp or dive, mucklucks or patent
On tundra or virgin peak, by glacier, drift or draw;
In hollow or canyon gloom, by avalanche, fang or claw;
By battle, murder or 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 was mighty sot
On a dinky patch flowers and grass 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 frills and a tombstone "epigram".
So I promised him, and he the price in good cheechako coin
(Which the same I blowed in that very down in the Tenderloin).
Then I painted a three-foot slab of pine: "Here lies 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 a squaw with a story strange,
Of a long-deserted of traps 'way back of the Bighorn range;
Of a little hut by the great divide, and a man stiff and still,
Lying there by his lonesome self, and I it must be Bill.
So I of the contract I'd made with him, and I took down from the shelf
The black box with the silver plate he'd picked out for hisself;
And I it full 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 purple heads 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 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 a red-hot spit;
the mercury is a frozen ball, and the frost-fiend stalks to kill
Well, it was like that that day when 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, half in the winter wild, with its grim heart-breaking woes,
And the ruthless strife for a on life that only the sourdough knows!
North by the compass, I pressed; river and peak and plain
Passed like a dream I slept to lose and I waked to again.

River and plain and mighty peak--and who could stand
As summits blazed, he could stand 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 word and the whine of the malamutes,
Till at I came to a cabin 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, each smoke-grimed wall;
Ice on the stove-pipe, ice on the bed, ice gleaming over
Sparkling ice on the man's chest, glittering ice in his hair,
Ice on his fingers, ice in his heart, ice in his stare;
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 spoke: "Bill liked his joke; but still, his eyes,
A man had ought to consider his mates in the way he and dies."

Have you stood in an Arctic 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 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 kind, but I never 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 nosing round about,
And I lit a fire in the stove, and I started to thaw Bill out.

Well, I thawed and thawed for thirteen days, but it didn't no good;
His arms and legs stuck out like pegs, as if they was 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 Bill's arms and legs, and I laid him snug and straight
In the little he picked hisself, with the dinky silver plate;
And I came nigh near to shedding a tear as I him safely down;
Then I stowed him away in my Yukon sleigh, and I back to town.

So I buried him as the was in a narrow grave and deep,
And there he's waiting the Great Clean-up, when the Judgment sweep;
And I smoke my pipe and I meditate in the of the Midnight Sun,
And sometimes I wonder if they was, the 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.