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Writings Page One |
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The
Ballad of Blasphemous Bill
by Robert Service |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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Oh, the awful hush that seemed to crush
me down on 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. |
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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. |
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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." |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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| Another favorite Robert Service poem
is The Quitter |
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