Luyện nghe bài hát The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill

I took a contract to bury the body of Bill MacKie,
Whenever, wherever or the manner 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, mucklucks or shoon;
On velvet tundra or virgin peak, by glacier, drift or
In muskeg hollow or canyon gloom, by avalanche, fang or
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 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 died or how he died, it didn't a damn
So as he had a grave with frills and a tombstone "epigram".
So I promised him, and he paid the price in good cheechako
(Which the same I blowed in very night down in the Tenderloin).
Then I painted a three-foot slab of pine: "Here poor Bill MacKie",
And I it up on my cabin wall and I waited for Bill to die.

Years away, and at last one day came a squaw with a story strange,
Of a long-deserted line of traps 'way back of the range;
Of a little hut by the great divide, and a white man and still,
Lying by his lonesome 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 plate he'd picked out for
And I it full of grub 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 wild when it's below;
When the ice-worms wriggle their purple heads through the crust of the pale blue
When the pine-trees like little guns in the silence of the wood,
And the icicles hang like tusks under the parka hood;
When the stove-pipe breaks 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 that day when I set out to for Bill.

Oh, the hush that seemed to crush me down on every hand,
As I blundered blind with a to find through that blank 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 I slept to lose and I waked to dream again.

River and and mighty peak--and who could stand unawed?
As their summits blazed, he could stand at the foot of the throne 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,
Till at last I came to a cabin squat, built in the 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, sheathing each smoke-grimed
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 glassy
Hard as a log and trussed like a frog, his arms 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 consider his mates in the way he 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 sat by a frozen corpse 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 never 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 seem no
His arms and stuck out like pegs, as if they was made 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 off poor Bill's arms and legs, and I laid him snug and straight
In the little coffin he picked hisself, with the dinky plate;
And I came nigh near to shedding a tear as I him safely down;
Then I stowed him away in my Yukon sleigh, and I back to town.

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