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First Line: Sleep on, great david, in your prairie grave
Last Line: And fighting, died.
Subject(s): Moffat, David Halliday (1839-1911)


Sleep on, great David, in your prairie grave,
Your labor ended.

By the light of your high dream
Men have toiled in the heart
Of the mountain peak,
They have fashioned a corridor
In the living rock:
This be your monument,
Greater than pyramid or mausoleum.
Castle or mighty battlement, --
A cenotaph, with portals wide
To greet the Orient and Occident,
Through dotted veils of snow
And gauze of trailing mist,
Where swaying priests,
In sagging garbs of green,
Chant your unending requiem.

Along the sky line of the snowy range,
Your phantom cortege sweeps on majestically.
As herds of pallid bison,
Scorning the drear escarpment
And the dread crevasse,
Awaken long stifled detonations
To echo through the crypt below.

Within your empty tomb
No emblem shall there be of death;
But harbingers of life and growth,
For through its hidden miles shall flow
A tide of travelers who journey far;
The wealth of forest and of fruitful field.
The bounties of the mine,
The living waters from ten thousand snows.
From ashes of your hope, long dead,
A greater empire, phoenix-like, shall spring.

High on each portal's brow
Your proud name is engraved;
David Moffat. Builder, Benefactor.
Although your tardy fame
Employs the lintels' lofty space
There shall be carved upon the pillars
Which have raised it there
The cherished names of all our noble dead.
They must not go unsung nor honored less,
Who fought that cruel rock so manfully,
And fighting, died.





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