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Far out in the wilds of Oregon
On a lonely mountain side
Where Columbia’s mighty waters
Fell down to the ocean’s tide,
Where the giant fir and cedar
Are imaged in the wave
O’ergrown with weeds and lichens,
I found Jack Dempsey’s grave

I found no marble monolith
No broken shaft or stone
To tell of the great triumphs
This vanished hero won;
No rose, no shamrock I could find,
No mortals here to tell,
How sleeps in this forsaken spot
The immortal Nonpareil

A wind rock-strewn canyon road,
That mortals seldom tread,
Leads up this lonely mountain
To the bivouac of the dead.
And the western sun was sinking
In the Pacific’s golden waves
And solemn pines kept watching
O’er poor Jack Dempsey’s grave

Forgotten by ten thousand throats
That thundered his acclaim;
Forgotten by his friends and foes
Who cheered his very name
Oblivion wraps his faded form
But ages hence shall save
The memory of that Irish lad
That sleeps in Dempsey’s grave

Oh! Fame, why sleeps thy favoured son
In wilds, woods and 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
Val O’Grady