Without it."

To Eglamor his art is a mysterious ritual, of which he is the sacrosanct
priest, and his happy rhyme the divine response vouchsafed to him in
answer. Such beauty as he produces is no effluence from a soul mating
itself, like Wordsworth's, "in love and holy passion with the universe,"
but a cunning application of the approved recipes for effective writing
current in the literary guild;--

"He, no genius rare,
Transfiguring in fire or wave or air
At will, but a poor gnome that, cloistered up
In some rock-chamber, with his agate-cup,
His topaz-rod, his seed-pearl, in these few
And their arrangement finds enough to do
For his best art."[13]

[Footnote 13: Works, i. 131.]

From these mysticisms and technicalities of Troubadour and all other
poetic guilds Browning decisively detaches his poet. Sordello is not a
votary of poetry; he does not "cultivate the Muse"; he does not even
prostrate himself before the beauty and wonder of the visible universe.
Poetry is the atmosphere in which he lives; and in the beauty without he
recognises the "dream come true" of a soul which (like that of Pauline's
lover) "existence" thus "cannot satiate, cannot surprise." "Laugh thou
at envious fate," adorers cry to this inspired Platonist,

"Who, from earth's simplest combination ...
Dost soar to heaven's complexest essence, rife