good things assigned as heralds of a better thing behind" -- he is
"deposed from his kingly throne, and his glory is taken from him".
Of himself, Sordello says: "The power he took most pride to test,
whereby all forms of life had been professed at pleasure,
forms already on the earth, was but a means of power beyond,
whose birth should, in its novelty, be kingship's proof. Now,
whether he came near or kept aloof the several forms he longed
to imitate, not there the kingship lay, he sees too late. Those forms,
unalterable first as last, proved him her copier, not the protoplast
of nature: what could come of being free by action to exhibit
tree for tree, bird, beast, for beast and bird, or prove earth bore
one veritable man or woman more? Means to an end such proofs are:
what the end?"

The answer given involves the great Browning idea of
the quickening power of personality: "Let essence, whatsoe'er it be,
extend -- never contract!"

By "essence" we must understand that which "constitutes man's self,
is what Is", as the dying John, in `A Death in the Desert',
expresses it -- that which backs the active powers and
the conscious intellect, "subsisting whether they assist or no".

"Let essence, whatsoe'er it be, extend -- never contract!"
Sordello says. "Already you include the multitude"; that is,
you gather up in yourself, in an effective fulness and harmony,
what lies scattered and ineffective in the multitude;
"then let the mulitude include yourself"; that is, be substantiated,
essenced with yourself; "and the result were new: themselves before,
the multitude turn YOU" (become yourself). "This were to live