Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, JACK DEMPSEY'S GRAVE, by ANONYMOUS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

JACK DEMPSEY'S GRAVE, by                    
First Line: Far out in the wilds of oregon
Last Line: "unmarked, leave dempsey's grave"
Subject(s): "boxing & Boxers;cowboys;dempsey, Jack (1895-1983);graves;oregon;ranch Life;west (u.s.);" Tombs;tombstones;southwest;pacific States


FAR out in the wilds of Oregon,
On a lonely mountain side,
Where Columbia's mighty waters
Roll down to the Ocean's tide;
Where the giant fir and cedar
Are imaged in the wave,
O'ergrown with ferns and lichens,
I found poor Dempsey's grave.

I found no marble monolith,
No broken shaft nor stone,
Recording sixty victories
This vanquished victor won;
No rose, no shamrock could I find,
No mortal here to tell
Where sleeps in this forsaken spot
The immortal Nonpareil.

A winding, wooded canyon road
That mortals seldom tread
Leads up this lonely mountain
To this desert of the dead.
And the western sun was sinking
In Pacific's golden wave;
And these solemn pines kept watching
Over poor Jack Dempsey's grave.

That man of honor and of iron,
That man of heart and steel,
That man who far out-classed his class
And made mankind to feel
That Dempsey's name and Dempsey's fame
Should live in serried stone,
Is now at rest far in the West
In the wilds of Oregon.

Forgotten by ten thousand throats
That thundered his acclaim —
Forgotten by his friends and foes
That cheered his very name;
Oblivion wraps his faded form,
But ages hence shall save
The memory of that Irish lad
That fills poor Dempsey's grave.

O Fame, why sleeps thy favored son
In wilds, in woods, in weeds?
And shall he ever thus sleep on —
Interred his valiant deeds?
'Tis strange New York should thus forget
Its "bravest of the brave,"
And in the wilds of Oregon
Unmarked, leave Dempsey's grave.





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