Luyện nghe bài hát The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill

I took a to bury the body of blasphemous Bill MacKie,
Whenever, or whatsoever the manner of death he die
Whether he die in the light o' day or the peak-faced moon;
In or dance-hall, camp 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 sudden wealth, by pestilence, or lead
I swore on the Book I would follow and look till I my tombless dead.

For Bill was a kind of cuss, and his mind was mighty sot
On a patch with 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 with frills and a tombstone "epigram".
So I promised him, and he paid the in good cheechako coin
(Which the same I blowed in that night 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 and I waited 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 'way back of the range;
Of a little hut by the great divide, and a man stiff and still,
Lying there by his lonesome self, and I figured it be Bill.
So I thought of the contract I'd made him, and I took down from the shelf
The swell box with the silver plate he'd picked out for hisself;
And I packed it full of and "hooch", and I slung it on the sleigh;
Then I harnessed up my of dogs and was off at dawn of day.

You know what it's like in the Yukon wild 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 little guns in the silence of the wood,
And the icicles down like tusks under the parka hood;
When the smoke breaks 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 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 that seemed to crush me down on every hand,
As I blundered blind with a trail to find through that blank and bitter
dazed, half crazed in the winter wild, with its grim heart-breaking woes,
And the ruthless strife for a grip on life that only the knows!
North by the compass, North I pressed; and peak and plain
Passed a dream I slept to lose and I waked to dream again.

River and plain and mighty who could stand unawed?
As their summits blazed, he 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 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, ice, like a winding-sheet, sheathing each smoke-grimed wall;
Ice on the stove-pipe, ice on the bed, ice gleaming all;
Sparkling ice on the man's chest, glittering ice in his hair,
Ice on his fingers, ice in his heart, ice in his stare;
as a log and trussed like a frog, with his arms and legs outspread.
I gazed at the coffin I'd brought for him, and I gazed at the dead,
And at I spoke: "Bill liked his joke; 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 Arctic hut in the of the Pole,
With a coffin six by three and a grief you can't control?
you ever sat by a frozen corpse that 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 kind, but I never felt so blue
As I sat there gazing at that and studying what I'd do.
Then I and I kicked 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 thawed and thawed for thirteen days, but it didn't 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 lie straight, so I guess I got to saw."
So I sawed off poor Bill's arms and legs, and I 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 nailed him down;
Then I stowed him away in my Yukon sleigh, and I 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, when the sluice-heads sweep;
And I smoke my pipe and I meditate in the light of the Sun,
And sometimes I wonder if they was, the 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.