Columbus

“Columbus” opens in the middle of the action: It is immediately clear to the reader that Christopher Columbus and his men have been sailing for quite some time, and their voyage of discovery has not yet reached its end. The speaker creates suspense in the opening lines by describing the liminal space Columbus’s ship is currently traversing between the known and the unknown, as behind the ship lie “the gray Azores / Behind the gates of Hercules” (Lines 1-2), while stretching before the ship is nothing but “shoreless seas” (Line 4) as far as the eye can see. The “gray Azores” (Line 1) refers to Portugal’s island archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, symbolizing the “Old World” of European civilization and Portugal’s own voyages of discovery during that era. The “gates of Hercules” (Line 2) are both a geographical reference to the Pillars of Hercules by the Strait of Gibraltar, and an invocation of the world of Greek mythology and the fabled Twelve Labors of Hercules: a Greek demigod. With these two allusions, the speaker sets the tone for the voyage: It is both a daring attempt to leave behind the familiar and discover something new, and also rather heroic in nature—it is hinted that Columbus himself may be a contemporary Hercules, performing a new feat worthy of a classical