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 manner of he die
Whether he die in the light o' day or under the peak-faced
In cabin or dance-hall, camp or dive, mucklucks or patent
On velvet tundra or virgin peak, by glacier, or draw;
In muskeg or canyon gloom, by avalanche, fang or claw;
By battle, murder or sudden wealth, by pestilence, or lead
I swore on the Book I would follow and look till I found my dead.

For Bill was a dainty kind of cuss, and his mind was sot
On a dinky patch with flowers and 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 grave with and a tombstone "epigram".
So I him, and he paid the price in good cheechako coin
(Which the same I blowed in that very down in the Tenderloin).
Then I painted a three-foot slab of pine: "Here lies poor 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 'way back of the range;
Of a hut by the great divide, and a white man stiff and still,
Lying there by his self, and I figured it must be Bill.
So I thought of the contract I'd made him, and I took down from the shelf
The swell black box with the silver he'd picked out for hisself;
And I packed it full of grub and "hooch", and I slung it on the
Then I harnessed up my of dogs and was off at dawn of day.

You know what it's in the Yukon wild when 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 like guns in the silence of the wood,
And the icicles hang down like under the parka hood;
When the stove-pipe smoke sudden off, and the sky is weirdly lit,
And the careless feel of a bit of steel burns a red-hot spit;
When the mercury is a frozen ball, and the frost-fiend stalks to
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 with a trail to find through that blank and bitter land;
Half dazed, half crazed in the winter wild, with its grim woes,
And the ruthless strife for a grip on life that the sourdough knows!
North by the compass, North I pressed; river and and plain
Passed a dream I slept to lose and I waked to dream again.

River and plain and mighty peak--and who 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 harsh word and the of the malamutes,
Till at last I came to a cabin squat, built in the of a hill,
And I burst in the door, and there on the floor, 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 gleaming 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
as a log and trussed like a frog, with his arms and legs outspread.
I gazed at the 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,
a little coffin six by three and a grief you can't control?
Have you ever sat by a frozen corpse that looks at you a grin,
And that seems to say: "You may try all day, but you'll jam me in"?
I'm not a man of the quitting kind, but I felt so blue
As I sat gazing at that stiff and studying what I'd do.
Then I rose and I kicked off the husky 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 didn't seem no
His arms and legs stuck out like pegs, as if 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 Bill's arms and legs, and I laid him snug and straight
In the little he picked hisself, with the dinky silver plate;
And I came nigh near to 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 was in a narrow grave and deep,
And there he's waiting the Great Clean-up, when the Judgment sluice-heads
And I smoke my pipe and I meditate in the 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 poor old how hard he was to saw.