Harriet Monroe The Columbian Ode Chicago: W. Irving Way and Co. 1893 Monroe’s poem, The Columbian Ode, was commissioned for the World’s Columbian Exposition to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of America. Sarah Cowell Le Moyne delivered the poem to the more than 100,000 people who attended the exposition’s opening ceremony on 21 October 1892.