Luyện nghe bài hát The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill

I took a contract to bury the of blasphemous Bill MacKie,
Whenever, wherever or whatsoever the of death he die
he die in the light o' day or under 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 or canyon gloom, by avalanche, fang or claw;
By battle, murder or wealth, by pestilence, hooch or lead
I swore on the Book I follow and look till I found my tombless dead.

For Bill was a dainty kind of cuss, and his mind was sot
On a dinky patch with and grass in a civilized bone-yard lot.
And where he died or how he died, it didn't matter a
So long as he had a grave with frills and a "epigram".
So I promised him, and he paid the in good cheechako coin
(Which the same I in that very night down in the Tenderloin).
I painted a three-foot slab of pine: "Here lies poor Bill MacKie",
And I hung it up on my cabin wall and I for Bill to die.

passed away, and at last one day came a squaw with a story strange,
Of a long-deserted line of traps back of the Bighorn range;
Of a little hut by the great divide, and a man stiff and still,
Lying there by his lonesome self, and I it must be Bill.
So I of the contract I'd made with him, and I took down from the shelf
The swell black box with the 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 and was off at dawn 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 little guns in the silence of the wood,
And the hang down like tusks under the parka hood;
the stove-pipe smoke breaks sudden off, and the sky is weirdly lit,
And the careless feel of a bit of steel burns like a spit;
When the mercury is a frozen ball, and the stalks to kill
Well, it was just like that day when I set out to look for Bill.

Oh, the awful hush that seemed to crush me on every hand,
As I blundered blind with a trail to find through that and bitter land;
Half dazed, half crazed in the winter wild, its grim heart-breaking woes,
And the ruthless strife for a on life that only the sourdough knows!
North by the compass, North I pressed; river and and plain
Passed like a dream I to lose and I waked to dream again.

River and plain and mighty who could stand unawed?
As their summits blazed, he could stand 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,
at last 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, 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 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 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 six by three and a grief you can't control?
Have you ever sat by a corpse 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 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 nosing about,
And I lit a roaring fire in the stove, and I started to thaw out.

Well, I thawed and thawed for days, but it didn't seem no good;
His arms and legs stuck out like pegs, as if they was of wood.
Till at last I "It ain't no use--he's 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 arms and legs, and I him snug and straight
In the little he picked hisself, with the dinky silver plate;
And I nigh near to shedding a tear as I nailed him safely down;
Then I stowed him away in my Yukon sleigh, and I back to town.

So I buried him as the was in a narrow grave and deep,
And there he's 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 often of poor old Bill--and how hard he was to saw.