High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The 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.