Luyện nghe bài hát The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill

I took a contract to bury the body of blasphemous MacKie,
Whenever, or whatsoever the manner of death he die
Whether he die in the light o' day or 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 hollow or canyon gloom, by avalanche, fang or claw;
By battle, murder or sudden wealth, by pestilence, hooch or
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 flowers 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 frills and a tombstone "epigram".
So I promised him, and he paid the price in good cheechako
(Which the same I in that very night down in the Tenderloin).
Then I painted a three-foot slab of pine: "Here lies Bill MacKie",
And I hung it up on my cabin wall and I for Bill to die.

Years passed away, and at last one day came a squaw with a strange,
Of a long-deserted line of traps back of the Bighorn range;
Of a little hut by the great divide, and a white man 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 black box with the silver plate he'd 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 dogs and was off at of day.

You know what it's like in the Yukon wild when it's 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 tusks the parka hood;
When the smoke breaks sudden off, and the sky is weirdly lit,
And the careless feel of a bit of steel like a red-hot spit;
When the mercury is a frozen ball, and the frost-fiend to kill
Well, it was just like that that day I set out to look for Bill.

Oh, the awful hush that seemed to crush me down on hand,
As I blundered blind a trail to find through that blank and bitter land;
Half dazed, half 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, I pressed; river and peak and plain
Passed like a I slept to lose and I waked 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, 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, 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, sheathing 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 arms and 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 ought to consider his mates in the way he and dies."

Have you ever stood in an hut in the shadow of the Pole,
With a coffin six by three and a grief you can't control?
Have you ever sat by a frozen corpse looks at you with a grin,
And that 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 felt so
As I sat there gazing at stiff and studying what I'd do.
Then I rose and I kicked off the dogs that were nosing round about,
And I lit a roaring in the stove, and I started to thaw Bill out.

Well, I thawed and thawed for thirteen days, but it seem no good;
His arms and legs out like pegs, as if they was made of wood.
Till at last I said: "It ain't no froze too hard to thaw;
obstinate, and he won't lie straight, so I guess I got to saw."
So I sawed off poor Bill's and legs, and I laid him snug and straight
In the little coffin he picked hisself, the dinky silver plate;
And I nigh near to shedding a tear as I nailed him safely down;
Then I him away in my Yukon sleigh, and I started back to town.

So I buried him as the was in a narrow grave and deep,
And he's waiting the Great Clean-up, when the Judgment sluice-heads sweep;
And I my pipe and I meditate in the light 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 how hard he was to saw.