NONPAREIL JACK 157 YEARS

The poem written on the Nonpareil's grave. Boxing's greatest elegy.


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

 

James Kelly's draw with Jack Burke and wins over Gabig, Kelliher, McCarthy and McCaffrey are phenomenal performances, so underrated and forgotten now.

 

Anybody has any idea when he was titled "Nonpareil" and whether that title was really borrowed from Jack Randall? There was a later champion in the 1860s titled the same, Nonpareil Diсk Hollywood.

 

That's absolutely brilliant.

 

Brilliant and beautiful!

 

To clarify my question above, he was given the title of Nonpareil at some point before May 1884. But I don't know when and what sporting writer reported it first.

1884-05-08 The Gazette (Montreal, QC, Canada) (page 8)
The glove contest between Jem Hurst, the Canadian pugilist, and Jack Dempsey, the Nonpareil pugilist, which was to have been decided at New York Friday night, did not take place. The match was arranged at Billy Madden's Athletic hall two weeks ago, when August F. Tuthill deposited $100 for Dempsey, and Georges Fulljames deposited a like amount for Hurst, to box six rounds for $200. On Thursday it was learned that Hurst had weakened, and left the city without informing his backer. Mr. Fox decided that he would pay the stakes to Dempsey.

 

Thank you for posting that. Outstanding. Especially considering I am an Oregon man, about an hour from where he is buried.