Spender, Stephen.

"I think continually of those who were truly

great".
Summary
- the speaker pays a posthumous tribute to great men
- great men: supposedly ancient historians, artists, or poets; ambitious, zealous, and
passionate
- captured the aspects of history and so made it live forever ("What is precious is never
to forget")
- conclusion: the great men were "born of the sun", "travelled [] towards the sun",
and marked the air with the greatness

Analysis
- free verse, unrhymed
- the great men are fittingly connected with images of sun and light
- the great men and their achievements are associated with lively natural images, as
opposed to the lifeless and deadening city images; and finally identified with the loftiest
manifestations of nature (sun, clouds, wind, sky, etc.)
- a celebration of the great men specifically, the spiritual aspect of human beings
generally
- a celebration of the nature as preferred to the city

Basics
Author
Spender, Stephen. (1909 - 1995).
Full Title
Untitled, the first line is used for identification.
Form
Poem.

Works Cited
Spender, Stephen. "I think continually of those who were truly great". Collected Poems.
1928 - 1985. London: Faber and Faber, 1990.

Vce zde: http://anglistika.webnode.cz/products/spender-stephen-i-think-continually-of-

those-who-were-truly-great/

1. Based on the poem entitled "The Truly Great by Stephen Spender", the distinct quality of those
who are great is having great ambitions and since the very beginning until the time he/she was born.
It is him who never stops dreaming and believing that is truly great.

2. The second stanza of the poem suggests that nobody should forget anything or everything and
everybody who is precious.
3. The legacy of those who are great based on the poem is their acts of greatness, the memory of
which they were being remembered and their names remain in the hearts of the people who look up
to them and believe them.