In a buck-skin shirt that was glazed with dirt He sat and I seen him sway With a talon hand he clutched the keys God, but that man could play.
Were you ever out on the great alone, When the night was awful clear And the icy mountains held you in With a silence that you most could hear.
With only the howl of a timber wolf As you camped out there in the cold A half-dead thing in a stark dead world Clean mad, for the muck, called gold.
While high overhead green, yellow, and red The Northern lights swept in bars Then you’ve a hunch what the music meant Hunger night, and the stars.
Hunger, not of the belly kind That’s banished with bacon and beans. But the gnawing hunger of a lonely man For a home, and all that it means.
For a fireside far, from the cares that are Four walls and a roof above But oh, so cram full of cozy joy And crowned with a woman’s love.
A woman dearer than all the world And true as heaven is true God, how ghastly she looks through her rouge The Lady, who was known as Lou.
The music almost died away, so soft That you scarce could hear, And you felt that your life had been looted Of all that it once held dear.
That someone had stolen the woman you loved And her love was a devil’s lie And your guts were gone and the best for you Was to crawl away and die.
’Twas the crowning glory of a heart’s dispair And it thrilled you through and through I guess I’ll make it a spread Misere Said Dangerous Dan McGrew.
The music almost died away Then oft burst like a pent-up flood And it seemed to say, repay, repay And your eyes went blind with blood.
And the thought came back like an ancient wrong And it stung like a frozen lash And the lust awoke, to kill, to kill, And the music stopped with a flash.
The stranger turned and his eyes they burned In a most peculiar way In a buck-skin shirt that was glazed with dirt He sat and I seen him sway.
Then, his lips went in in a kind of grin And he spoke and his voice was strong And boys, said he, you don’t know me And none of you care a Damn.
But I want to state, and my words are straight And I’ll bet my poke their true That one of you is a “Hound of Hell” And that one is Dan McGrew.
Then I ducked my head and the lights went out And two guns blazed in the dark Then the lights went up and a woman screamed And two men lay stiff and stark.