From the naive self-reflection of his boyish dreams he passes on to visions which embrace a continually fuller measure of life, until he forestalls the sublime Dantesque conception of a poetry vast and deep as humanity, where every soul will stand forth revealed in its naked truth.

But he cannot, like Dante, put his vast conceptions into the shackles of intelligible speech.

His uncompromising "infinity" will not comply with finite conditions, and he remains an inefficient and inarticulate genius, a Hamlet of poetry.
In the second half of the poem the Hamlet of poetry becomes likewise a Hamlet of politics.

He aspires to serve the people otherwise than by holding up to them the mirror of an all-revealing poetry.

Though by birth associated with the aristocratic and imperial Ghibellines, his natural affinity is clearly with the Church, which in some sort stood for the people against the nobles, and for spirit against brute force.
We see him, now, a frail, inspired Shelleyan[15] democrat, pleading the Guelph cause before the great Ghibelline soldier Salinguerra,--as he had once pitted the young might of native song against the accomplished Troubadour Eglamor.