"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:
“O what to me the little room
That was brimmed up with prayer and rest;
He bade me out into the gloom,
And my breast lies upon his breast.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Why is it that many contemporary male thinkers, especially men of color, repudiate the imperialist legacy of Columbus but affirm dimensions of that legacy by their refusal to repudiate patriarchy?”
—bell hooks (b. c. 1955)