Then a sudden revulsion. "He would drink the very dregs of life! How
many have sacrificed it whilst its cup was full, because a better still
seemed behind it."

"... the death I fly, revealed
So oft a better life this life concealed,
And which sage, champion, martyr, through each path
Have hunted fearlessly--...."
(vol. i. p. 272.)

"But they had a belief which he has not. They knew what 'masters life.'
For him the paramount fact is that of his own being...."

This is the last protest of the flesh within him. Sordello is dying, and
probably feels that he is so; and he lapses into a calm contemplation,
which reveals to him the last secret of his mistaken career. He already
knew that he had ignored the bodily to the detriment of his spiritual
existence. He now feels that he has destroyed his body by forcing on it
the exigencies of the spirit. He has striven to obtain infinite
consciousness, infinite enjoyment, from finite powers. He has broken the
law of life. He has missed (so we interpret Mr. Browning's conclusion)
the ideal of that divine and human Love which would have given the
freest range to his spirit and yet accepted that law. Eglamor began with
love. Will Sordello find it, meeting that gentle spirit on his course?

We know at least that the soul in him has conquered. His stamp upon the
floor has brought Palma and Salinguerra to him in anxious haste. They
find him dead: