  The density matrix renormalization group (``DMRG'') discovered by White has
shown to be a powerful method to understand the properties of many one
dimensional quantum systems. In the case where renormalization eventually
converges to a fixed point we show that quantum states in the thermodynamic
limit with periodic boundary conditions can be simply represented by a special
type of product ground state with a natural description of Bloch states of
elementary excitations that are spin-1 solitons. We then observe that these
states can be rederived through a simple variational ansatz making no reference
to a renormalization construction. The method is tested on the spin-1
Heisenberg model.
