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 muskeg 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 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 flowers and grass in a civilized bone-yard lot.
And where he 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 price in good coin
(Which the same I blowed in that night down in the Tenderloin).
Then I painted a three-foot slab of "Here lies poor Bill MacKie",
And I hung it up on my wall and I waited for Bill to die.

Years passed away, and at last one day came a squaw with a strange,
Of a line of traps 'way back of the Bighorn range;
Of a hut by the great divide, and a white man stiff and still,
there by his lonesome self, and I figured it must be Bill.
So I thought of the contract I'd made with him, and I down from the shelf
The swell black box with the silver plate he'd 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 dogs and was off at of day.

You know 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 blue snow;
When the crack like little guns in the silence of the wood,
And the icicles hang down tusks under the parka hood;
When the stove-pipe smoke sudden off, and the sky is weirdly lit,
And the feel of a bit of steel burns like a red-hot spit;
the mercury is a frozen 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 hush that to crush me down on every hand,
As I blundered blind with a 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 only the knows!
North by the compass, North I river and peak and plain
Passed a dream I slept to lose and I waked to dream again.

River and plain and mighty peak--and who could 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 last I came to a cabin squat, 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 over all;
Sparkling ice on the dead man's chest, 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 at the coffin I'd brought for him, and I gazed at the gruesome dead,
And at I spoke: "Bill liked his joke; but still, goldarn his eyes,
A man had to consider his mates in the way he goes and dies."

you ever stood in an Arctic hut in the shadow of the Pole,
With a little coffin six by three and a you can't control?
Have you ever sat by a frozen corpse that at you with a grin,
And seems 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 that stiff and what I'd do.
Then I rose and I off the husky dogs 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 thirteen days, but it seem no good;
His arms and legs stuck out like pegs, as if they was of wood.
Till at last I said: "It ain't no use--he's froze too hard to
He's obstinate, and he 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 he picked hisself, with the dinky silver plate;
And I came near to shedding a tear as I nailed him safely down;
Then I stowed him away in my Yukon sleigh, and I started to town.

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