The poem evokes the enterprising spirit of 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 until around the onset of World War I.
Whitman first wrote "Prayer of Columbus" in late 1873 before its first publication in the March 1874 issue of Harper's Monthly.
[1] Scholar Linda Wagner-Martin notes that the poem is "unusually autobiographical" for Whitman, in that it incorporates his own experiences with declining health and aging.
[2] Portions of Whitman's "Prayer of Columbus" have been inscribed in gilded letters in the marble wall of the Archives/Navy Memorial metro station in Washington, D.C.