Columbus

The mate warns Columbus that the ship is voyaging under unfavorable conditions, and his descriptions of the sea are especially vivid. According to the mate, the sea is a “mad sea” (Line 26), with “mad” suggestive of both insanity and unpredictability, but also anger, as if the sea is resentful of the ship’s intrusion. The mate describes the large rolling waves of the sea as “lips” that are “curl[ing]” (Line 27), with the edges of the waves likened to “lifted teeth” that could “bite” (Line 28) the ship and its crew. These descriptions turn the stormy conditions at sea into a symbol of the hardships Columbus and his crew face, which is turn alludes to the more general idea of confronting hardship.

As with Columbus’s ship and voyage, the light that appears in the poem’s fifth and final stanza functions on both a literal and figurative level, turning the light into perhaps the poem’s most powerful symbol. Literally, the light is the dawn that ends the night through which the ship has sailed: “Ah, that night / Of all dark nights! And then a speck? / A light! a light! a light! a light!” (Lines 34-36) Figuratively, the light represents the ultimate triumph of resilience over adversity, and also the light of knowledge, as Columbus’s discovery both widens European understanding of the world (“He gained a world” (Line 39) in finding the Americas) and serves as a moral lesson to be bold and dauntless in overcoming challenges: “[H]e gave that world / Its grandest lesson: ‘On! Sail on!’” (Line 40) This is why the speaker tells the reader that the light of dawn Columbus sees “grew to be Time’s burst of dawn” (Line 38), with “Time” referring to both the historical importance of Columbus’s discoveries for Europeans, and the timeless nature of the moral lesson the speaker believes the voyage represents.