It was their intensity of life which most attracted him.

He loved nothing so much as life--in plant or animal or man.

His longer poems are records of the larger movement of human life, the steadfast record in quiet verse as in _Paracelsus_, or the clashing together in abrupt verse as in _Sordello_, of the turmoil and meditation, the trouble and joy of the living soul of humanity.

When he, this archangel of reality, got into touch with pure fact of the human soul, beating with life, he was enchanted.

And this was his vast happiness in his longest poem, the _Ring and the Book_-- Do you see this square old yellow book I toss I' the air, and catch again, and twirl about By the crumpled vellum covers--pure crude fact Secreted from man's life when hearts beat hard And brains, high blooded, ticked two centuries hence?
Give it me back.