_Sordello_, in 1840 (long before the effort of which we speak began), was such a poem--the history of a specialised soul, with all its scenery and history vividly mediaeval.
Think of the _Spanish Cloister_, _The Laboratory_, _A Grammarian's Funeral_, the _Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church_, poems, each of which paints an historical period or a vivid piece of its life.
Think of _The Ring and the Book_, with all the world of Rome painted to the life, and all the soul of the time! The same kind of work was done for phases and periods of the arts from Greek times to the Renaissance, I may even say, from the Renaissance to the present day.

_Balaustion's Prologue_ concentrates the passage of dramatic poetry from Sophocles to Euripides.

_Aristophanes' Apology_ realises the wild licence in which art and freedom died in Athens--their greatness in their ruin--and the passionate sorrow of those who loved what had been so beautiful.

_Cleon_ takes us into a later time when men had ceased to be original, and life and art had become darkened by the pain of the soul.

We pass on to two different periods of the Renaissance in _Fra Lippo Lippi_ and in _Andrea del Sarto_, and are carried further through the centuries of art when we read _Abt Vogler_ and _A Toccata of Galuppi's_.