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 of death he die
Whether he die in the light o' day or under the peak-faced
In or dance-hall, camp or dive, mucklucks or patent shoon;
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 I would follow and look till I found my tombless dead.

For Bill was a dainty of cuss, and his mind was mighty 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 him, and he paid 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 poor Bill MacKie",
And I hung it up on my cabin wall and I waited for 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 great divide, and a white man and still,
Lying by his lonesome 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 swell black box 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 team of and was off at dawn of day.

You what it's like in the Yukon wild when it's sixty-nine below;
When the ice-worms wriggle their purple heads through the crust of the pale blue
When the pine-trees crack like little guns in the of the wood,
And the icicles down like tusks under the parka hood;
When the stove-pipe smoke sudden off, and the sky is weirdly lit,
And the careless of a bit of steel burns like a red-hot spit;
When the mercury is a frozen ball, and the frost-fiend stalks to
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 blind with a trail to find through that blank and bitter land;
Half dazed, half crazed in the winter wild, with its heart-breaking woes,
And the ruthless strife for a grip on life that the sourdough knows!
North by the compass, North I pressed; and peak and plain
Passed like a dream I slept to lose and I to dream again.

River and plain and mighty who could 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 word and the whine of the malamutes,
Till at last I 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, like a winding-sheet, sheathing smoke-grimed wall;
Ice on the stove-pipe, ice on the bed, ice over all;
Sparkling ice on the dead 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 gazed at the I'd brought for him, and I gazed at the gruesome dead,
And at last I "Bill liked his joke; but still, goldarn his eyes,
A man had ought to 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 grief you control?
Have you ever sat by a frozen that looks at you with a grin,
And that seems to "You may try all day, but you'll never jam me in"?
I'm not a man of the quitting kind, but I never felt so
As I sat there gazing at stiff and studying what I'd do.
Then I rose and I off the husky dogs that were nosing round about,
And I lit a roaring fire in the stove, and I to thaw Bill out.

Well, I and thawed for thirteen days, but it didn't seem no good;
His arms and stuck out like pegs, as if they was made of wood.
Till at last I "It ain't 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 Bill's arms and legs, and I laid him and straight
In the little coffin he picked hisself, with the silver plate;
And I came nigh near to shedding a tear as I nailed him down;
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 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 things 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.