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| Música de "Hank Snow" de la Transferencia directa
| | Complementario "Ballad of Basphemous Bill" Ringtone |
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I took a contract to bury the body of blasphemous
Bill MacKie, Whenever, wherever or whatsoever the
manner of death he die Whether he die in the light
o' day or under the peak-faced moon; In cabin or
dance-hall, camp or dive, mucklucks or patent
shoon; On velvet tundra or virgin peak, by
glacier, drift or draw; In muskeg hollow or canyon
gloom, by avalanche, fang or claw; By battle,
murder or sudden wealth, by pestilence, hooch or
lead I swore on the Book I would follow and look
till I found my tombless dead.
For Bill was a dainty kind of cuss, and his mind
was mighty sot On a dinky patch with flowers and
grass in a civilized bone-yard lot. And where he
died or how he died, it didn't matter a damn So
long as he had a grave with frills and a tombstone
"epigram". So I promised him, and he
paid the price in good cheechako coin (Which the
same I blowed in that very night down in the
Tenderloin). Then I painted a three-foot slab of
pine: "Here lies poor Bill MacKie", And
I hung it up on my cabin wall and I waited for
Bill to die.
Years passed away, and at last one day came a
squaw with a story strange, Of a long-deserted
line of traps 'way back of the Bighorn range; Of a
little hut by the great divide, and a white man
stiff and still, Lying there 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 from
the shelf The swell black box with the silver
plate he'd picked out for hisself; And I packed it
full of grub and "hooch", and I slung it
on the sleigh; Then I harnessed 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 below; When the ice-worms wriggle
their purple heads through the crust of the pale
blue snow; When the pine-trees crack like little
guns in the silence of the wood, And the icicles
hang down like tusks under the parka hood; When
the stove-pipe smoke breaks sudden off, and the
sky is weirdly lit, And the careless feel of a bit
of steel burns like a red-hot spit; When 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 look for Bill.
Oh, the awful hush that seemed to crush me down on
[ Letras de Canciones encontraron en es.mp3lyrics.org/131 ]
every hand, As I blundered blind with a trail to
find through that blank and bitter land; Half
dazed, half crazed in the winter wild, with its
grim heart-breaking woes, And the ruthless strife
for a grip on life that only the sourdough knows!
North by the compass, North I pressed; river and
peak and plain Passed like a dream I slept to lose
and I waked to dream again.
River and plain and mighty peak--and who could
stand unawed? As their summits blazed, he could
stand undazed at the foot of the throne of God.
North, aye, North, through a land accurst, shunned
by the scouring brutes, And all I heard was my own
harsh word and the whine of the malamutes, Till at
last I came to a cabin squat, built in the side of
a hill, And I burst in the door, and there on the
floor, frozen to death, lay Bill.
Ice, white ice, like a winding-sheet, sheathing
each smoke-grimed wall; Ice on the stove-pipe, ice
on the bed, ice gleaming over all; Sparkling ice
on the dead man's chest, glittering ice in his
hair, Ice on his fingers, ice in his heart, ice in
his glassy stare; Hard as a log and trussed like a
frog, with his arms and legs outspread. I gazed at
the coffin I'd brought for him, and I gazed at the
gruesome dead, And at last I spoke: "Bill
liked his joke; but still, goldarn his eyes, A man
had ought to consider his mates in the way he goes
and dies."
Have you ever stood in an Arctic hut in the shadow
of the Pole, With 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 with a grin, And
that seems 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 blue As I sat
there gazing at that stiff and studying what I'd
do. Then I rose and I kicked off the husky dogs
that were nosing round about, And I lit a roaring
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 good; His arms and legs stuck
out like pegs, as if they was made of wood. Till
at last I said: "It ain't no use--he's froze
too hard to thaw; He's obstinate, and he won't lie
straight, so I guess I got to saw." So I
sawed off poor Bill's arms and legs, and I laid
him snug and straight In the little coffin he
picked hisself, with the dinky silver plate; And I
came nigh near to shedding a tear as I nailed him
safely down; Then I stowed him away in my Yukon
sleigh, and I started back to town.
So I buried 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 sweep;
And I smoke my pipe and I meditate in the light of
the Midnight Sun, And sometimes I wonder if they
was, the awful things I done. And as I sit and the
parson talks, expounding of the Law, I often think
of poor old Bill--and how hard he was to saw. |
Ver esta canción en diferentes idiomas (traducción automática) Música de "Hank Snow" de la Transferencia directa
Complimentary "Ballad of Basphemous Bill" Ringtone |
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