Luyện nghe bài hát The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill

I took a to bury the body of blasphemous Bill MacKie,
Whenever, wherever or whatsoever the of death he die
Whether he die in the light o' day or under the peak-faced
In cabin or dance-hall, camp or dive, or patent shoon;
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 till I found my tombless dead.

For Bill was a kind of cuss, and his mind was mighty sot
On a dinky patch with flowers and grass in a civilized lot.
And he died or how he died, it didn't matter a damn
So long as he had a grave with frills and a "epigram".
So I promised him, and he the price in good cheechako coin
(Which the I blowed in that very night down in the Tenderloin).
Then I painted a slab of pine: "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 long-deserted of traps 'way back of the Bighorn range;
Of a hut by the great divide, and a white man stiff and still,
Lying there by his lonesome self, and I it must be Bill.
So I thought of the contract I'd made with him, and I took down from the
The swell black box with the silver plate he'd out for hisself;
And I packed it full of grub and "hooch", and I 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 when sixty-nine below;
When the ice-worms wriggle their purple heads through the crust of the pale snow;
When the crack like little guns in the silence of the wood,
And the hang down like tusks under the parka hood;
When the stove-pipe 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 that that day when I set out to look for Bill.

Oh, the awful hush that seemed to me down on every hand,
As I blundered blind with a trail to find through that blank and land;
dazed, half crazed in the winter wild, with its grim 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 to lose and I waked to dream again.

and plain and mighty peak--and who could stand unawed?
As their summits blazed, he could stand undazed at the foot of the of God.
North, aye, North, through a 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 burst in the door, and 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 dead chest, glittering ice in his hair,
Ice on his fingers, ice in his heart, ice in his stare;
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 ought to consider his in the way he goes and dies."

Have you stood in an Arctic hut in the shadow of the Pole,
With a 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 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 and studying what I'd do.
Then I rose and I kicked off the husky dogs that nosing round about,
And I lit a roaring in the stove, and I started to thaw Bill out.

Well, I thawed and thawed for thirteen days, but it didn't no good;
His arms and legs out like pegs, as if they was made of wood.
Till at last I said: "It ain't no use--he's too hard to thaw;
obstinate, and he won't lie straight, so I guess I got to saw."
So I sawed off poor arms and legs, and I laid him snug and straight
In the little coffin he picked hisself, with the silver plate;
And I came nigh near to shedding a as I nailed him safely down;
Then I stowed him away in my 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, 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 think of poor old Bill--and how he was to saw.