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 shoon;
On velvet tundra or peak, by glacier, drift or draw;
In hollow or canyon gloom, by avalanche, fang or claw;
By battle, or sudden 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 dainty kind of cuss, and his mind was sot
On a dinky with flowers and grass 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 frills and a "epigram".
So I promised him, and he paid the price in cheechako coin
(Which the same I in that very night down in the Tenderloin).
Then I painted a three-foot of pine: "Here lies poor Bill MacKie",
And I hung it up on my cabin 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 made with him, and I took down the shelf
The swell black box 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 team of dogs and was off at of day.

You know what it's like in the Yukon when it's sixty-nine below;
When the ice-worms wriggle their purple through the crust of the pale blue snow;
When the pine-trees crack like 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 is a frozen ball, and the frost-fiend stalks to kill
Well, it was just like that that day 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 land;
Half dazed, half crazed in the winter wild, with its heart-breaking woes,
And the ruthless strife for a grip on that 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 plain and peak--and who could stand unawed?
As their summits blazed, he stand 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 harsh and the whine 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, like a winding-sheet, each smoke-grimed wall;
Ice on the stove-pipe, ice on the bed, ice gleaming over
Sparkling ice on the man's chest, glittering ice in his hair,
Ice on his fingers, ice in his heart, ice in his stare;
Hard as a log and trussed 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 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 stood in an Arctic hut in the shadow of the Pole,
With a little six by three and a grief you can't control?
Have you ever sat by a frozen 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 quitting kind, but I felt so blue
As I sat there gazing at that stiff and studying I'd do.
Then I rose and I kicked off the husky dogs that were round about,
And I lit a roaring fire in the stove, and I started to 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.
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 poor Bill's arms and legs, and I laid him snug and
In the little coffin he picked hisself, with the silver plate;
And I came near to shedding a tear as I nailed him safely down;
Then I stowed him in my Yukon sleigh, and I started back to town.

So I buried him as the contract was in a narrow and deep,
And there waiting the Great Clean-up, when the Judgment 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 think of poor old Bill--and how hard he was to saw.