But the world of men, incessantly recruited by new generations, does not die like the individual, and what Sordello could not do, it did.

It emerged from this confusion in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, with S.Francis, Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, the Pisani, Giotto, and the Commonwealth of Florence.

Religion, Poetry, Prose, Sculpture, Painting, Government and Law found new foundations.

The Renaissance began to dawn, and during its dawn kept, among the elect of mankind, all or nearly all the noble impulses and faith of mediaevalism.
This dawn of the Renaissance is nearly a hundred years away at the time of this poem, yet two of its characteristics vitally moved through this transition period; and, indeed, while they continued even to the end of the Renaissance, were powers which brought it about.

The first of these was a boundless curiosity about life, and the second was an intense individuality.