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 cabin or dance-hall, camp or dive, mucklucks or patent
On tundra or virgin 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 would follow and look till I my tombless dead.

For was a dainty kind of cuss, and his mind was mighty sot
On a patch with flowers and grass 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 price in cheechako coin
(Which the same I blowed in that night down in the Tenderloin).
Then I painted a three-foot of pine: "Here lies poor Bill MacKie",
And I hung it up on my cabin wall and I waited for to die.

Years passed away, and at last one day came a with a story strange,
Of a line 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 figured it 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 grub and "hooch", and I slung it on the
Then I harnessed up my team of dogs and was off at of day.

You know what it's like in the Yukon wild when it's sixty-nine
When the wriggle their purple heads through the crust of the pale blue 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 red-hot
When the mercury is a frozen ball, and the frost-fiend to kill
Well, it was like that that day when I set out to look for Bill.

Oh, the awful hush seemed to crush me down 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, with its grim woes,
And the ruthless strife for a grip on life only the sourdough knows!
by the compass, North I pressed; river and peak and plain
Passed like a dream I to lose and I waked to dream again.

River and plain and mighty peak--and who could unawed?
As summits blazed, he could stand undazed at the foot of the throne of God.
North, aye, North, through a accurst, shunned by the scouring brutes,
And all I was my own harsh word and the whine of the malamutes,
Till at last I to a cabin squat, built in the side of a hill,
And I burst in the door, and there on the floor, 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 over all;
ice on the dead man's chest, glittering ice in his hair,
Ice on his fingers, ice in his heart, ice in his stare;
Hard as a log and like a frog, with his arms and legs outspread.
I gazed at the coffin I'd 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 to consider his mates in the way he goes 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 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 felt so
As I sat there gazing at that stiff and studying I'd do.
Then I rose and I kicked off the husky dogs were nosing round about,
And I lit a fire 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 stuck out like pegs, as if they was of wood.
Till at last I said: "It ain't no use--he's froze too hard to
He's obstinate, and he won't lie straight, so I 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 dinky plate;
And I came nigh near to shedding a as I nailed 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 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 they was, the awful 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.