Luyện nghe bài hát The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill

I took a to bury the body of blasphemous Bill MacKie,
Whenever, wherever or the manner of death 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 or virgin peak, by glacier, drift or draw;
In muskeg hollow or canyon gloom, by avalanche, or claw;
By battle, or sudden wealth, by pestilence, hooch or lead
I on the Book I would 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 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 grave with frills and a "epigram".
So I promised him, and he paid the price in cheechako coin
(Which the same I blowed in that very down in the Tenderloin).
Then I painted a three-foot of pine: "Here lies poor Bill MacKie",
And I it up on my cabin 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 line of 'way back of the Bighorn range;
Of a little hut by the great divide, and a white man and still,
there by his lonesome 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 with the silver plate he'd out for hisself;
And I packed it full of and "hooch", and I slung it on the sleigh;
I harnessed 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;
the ice-worms wriggle their purple heads through the crust of the pale blue snow;
When the pine-trees crack like guns in the silence of the wood,
And the icicles hang down like tusks the parka hood;
When the stove-pipe smoke breaks off, and the sky is weirdly lit,
And the feel of a bit of steel burns like a red-hot spit;
the mercury is a frozen ball, and the frost-fiend stalks to kill
Well, it was just like that day when I set out to look for Bill.

Oh, the awful hush that to crush me down on every hand,
As I blundered blind with a trail to find through that and bitter land;
dazed, half crazed in the winter wild, with its grim heart-breaking woes,
And the ruthless strife for a grip on life 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 waked to again.

River and and mighty peak--and who could stand unawed?
As summits blazed, he could stand undazed at the foot of the throne of God.
North, aye, North, through a accurst, shunned by the scouring brutes,
And all I heard was my own harsh word and the 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 there on the floor, to death, lay Bill.

Ice, white ice, a winding-sheet, sheathing each 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 like a frog, with his arms and 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 to consider his mates in the way he goes and dies."

Have you ever 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 corpse 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 gazing at that stiff and 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 pegs, as if they was made of wood.
Till at last I said: "It no use--he's froze too hard to thaw;
He's obstinate, and he won't lie straight, so I I got to saw."
So I sawed off poor arms and legs, and I laid him snug and straight
In the little he picked hisself, with the dinky silver plate;
And I came near to shedding a tear as I nailed 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 in the light 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 think of poor old Bill--and how hard he was to saw.