Luyện nghe bài hát The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill

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

For Bill was a kind of cuss, and his mind was mighty sot
On a dinky patch with flowers and grass in a civilized lot.
And where he died or how he died, it matter a damn
So as he had a grave 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 night down in the Tenderloin).
Then I painted a three-foot slab of pine: "Here lies Bill MacKie",
And I it up on my cabin wall and I 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 and still,
Lying there by his self, and I figured it must be Bill.
So I thought of the contract I'd with him, and I took down from the shelf
The black box with the silver plate he'd picked out for hisself;
And I packed it full of grub and "hooch", and I slung it on the
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;
When the pine-trees crack little guns in the silence of the wood,
And the icicles hang down like under the parka hood;
When the stove-pipe smoke breaks sudden off, and the sky is 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 that that day when I set out to look for Bill.

Oh, the awful hush that seemed to crush me on every hand,
As I blundered blind a trail to find through that blank and bitter land;
Half dazed, half crazed in the winter wild, its grim heart-breaking woes,
And the ruthless for a grip on life that only the sourdough knows!
by the compass, North 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 who could stand unawed?
As their summits blazed, he could stand undazed at the 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 I came to a cabin 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, a winding-sheet, sheathing each smoke-grimed wall;
Ice on the stove-pipe, ice on the bed, ice gleaming over
Sparkling ice on the dead man's chest, 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, with his arms and outspread.
I gazed at the I'd brought for him, and I gazed at the gruesome dead,
And at last I spoke: "Bill 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 coffin six by three and a grief you can't control?
Have you sat by a frozen corpse that looks at you with a grin,
And that seems to say: "You may try all day, but never jam me in"?
I'm not a man of the quitting kind, but I never felt so
As I sat there at that stiff and studying what I'd do.
Then I rose and I kicked off the husky that were nosing round about,
And I lit a fire in the stove, and I started to thaw Bill out.

Well, I thawed and thawed for days, but it didn't seem no good;
His arms and legs stuck out pegs, as if they was 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 sawed off Bill's arms and legs, and I laid him snug and straight
In the coffin he picked 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 sleigh, and I started back to town.

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