Luyện nghe bài hát The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill

I a contract to bury the body of blasphemous Bill MacKie,
Whenever, wherever or the manner of death he die
Whether he die in the o' day or under 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 hollow or canyon gloom, by avalanche, fang or claw;
By battle, murder or sudden wealth, by pestilence, hooch or
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 was mighty sot
On a dinky patch with flowers and in a civilized bone-yard lot.
And he died or how he died, it didn't matter a damn
So as he had a grave with frills and a tombstone "epigram".
So I promised him, and he paid the 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 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 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 with him, and I took down the shelf
The swell black box with the silver plate he'd out for hisself;
And I packed it full of and "hooch", and I slung it on the sleigh;
Then I up my team of dogs and was off at dawn of day.

You know what it's like in the Yukon wild when it's sixty-nine
When the ice-worms wriggle purple heads through the crust of the pale blue snow;
the pine-trees crack like little guns in the silence of the wood,
And the icicles down like tusks under the parka hood;
the stove-pipe smoke breaks sudden off, and the sky is weirdly lit,
And the feel of a bit of steel burns like a red-hot 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 crush me down on 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 life that the sourdough knows!
North by the compass, North I river and peak and plain
Passed like a dream I slept to lose and I to dream again.

River and plain and 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 land accurst, by the scouring brutes,
And all I was my own harsh word and the whine of the malamutes,
Till at last I came to a cabin squat, built in the of a hill,
And I in the door, and there on the floor, frozen to death, lay Bill.

Ice, ice, like 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
Hard as a log and trussed like a frog, his arms and legs outspread.
I gazed at the 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 ever in an Arctic hut in the shadow of the Pole,
With a little coffin six by three and a grief you control?
Have you ever sat by a corpse that looks at you with a grin,
And that seems to say: "You may try all day, but never jam me in"?
I'm not a man of the kind, but I never felt so blue
As I sat there gazing at stiff and studying what I'd do.
Then I rose and I kicked off the husky dogs that were round about,
And I lit a roaring in the stove, and I started to thaw Bill out.

Well, I and thawed for thirteen days, but it didn't seem no good;
His arms and legs out like pegs, as if they was made of wood.
Till at last I said: "It no use--he's froze too hard to thaw;
He's obstinate, and he 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 nigh 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 contract was in a 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 of the Midnight 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.