"Prayer of Columbus" is a poem written by the late American poet Walt Whitman. The poem evokes the enterprising spirit of the Christopher Columbus in a God-fearing light, who rediscovered the North American continent in 1492, leading to the colonization of the Americas by the emerging European powers. Although the Viking Leif Ericson has generally been credited as having discovered the North American continent roughly 500 years earlier, Columbus' rediscovery has had a more lasting impact on the colonization trends that continued up until around the onset of World War I. Thus, Whitman's poem serves as a fitting tribute to the proper explorer.
Portions of Whitman's Prayer of Columbus have been enscribed in gilded letters in the marble wall of the Archives/Navy Memorial metro station in Washington, D.C.
Famous quotes containing the words prayer and/or columbus:
“Does any one suppose that private prayer is necessarily candid—necessarily goes to the roots of action! Private prayer is inaudible speech, and speech is representative: who can represent himself just as he is, even in his own reflections?”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“If Columbus was the first to discover the islands, Americus Vespucius and Cabot, and the Puritans, and we their descendants, have discovered only the shores of America.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)