That memorable day,
    (June was the month, Lorenzo named the Square)
    I leaned a little and overlooked my prize
    By the low railing round the fountain-source
    Close to the statue, where a step descends: 
    While clinked the cans of copper, as stooped and rose
    Thick-ankled girls who brimmed them, and made place
    For marketmen glad to pitch basket down,
    Dip a broad melon-leaf that holds the wet,
    And whisk their faded fresh.  And on I read
    Presently, though my path grew perilous
    Between the outspread straw-work, piles of plait
    Soon to be flapping, each o’er two black eyes
    And swathe of Tuscan hair, on festas fine: 
    Through fire-irons, tribes of tongs, shovels in sheaves,
    Skeleton bedsteads, wardrobe-drawers agape,
    Rows of tall slim brass lamps with dangling gear,—­
    And worse, cast clothes a-sweetening in the sun: 
    None of them took my eye from off my prize. 
    Still read I on, from written title page
    To written index, on, through street and street,
    At the Strozzi, at the Pillar, at the Bridge;
    Till, by the time I stood at home again
    In Casa Guidi by Felice Church,
    Under the doorway where the black begins
    With the first stone-slab of the staircase cold,
    I had mastered the contents, knew the whole truth
    Gathered together, bound up in this book,
    Print three-fifths, written supplement the rest.

This power, combined with his power of portraiture, makes this long poem alive.  No other man of his century could paint like him the to and fro of a city, the hurly-burly of humanity, the crowd, the movement, the changing passions, the loud or quiet clash of thoughts, the gestures, the dress, the interweaving of expression on the face, the whole play of humanity in war or peace.  As we read, we move with men and women; we are pressed everywhere by mankind.  We listen to the sound of humanity, sinking sometimes to the murmur we hear at night from some high window in London; swelling sometimes, as in Sordello, into a roar of violence, wrath, revenge, and war.  And it was all contained in that little body, brain and heart; and given to us, who can feel it, but not give it.  This is the power which above all endears him to us as a poet.  We feel in each poem not only the waves of the special event of which he writes, but also the large vibration of the ocean of humanity.

He was not unaware of this power of his.  We are told in Sordello that he dedicated himself to the picturing of humanity; and he came to think that a Power beyond ours had accepted this dedication, and directed his work.  He declares in the introduction that he felt a Hand ("always above my shoulder—­mark the predestination"), that pushed him to the stall where he found the fated book in whose womb lay his child—­The Ring and the Book.  And he believed that he had certain God-given qualities which fitted him for this work.  These he sets forth in this introduction, and the self-criticism is of the greatest interest.