over these.  He craves some means of impressing himself upon the world, some means of deploying the power that lies coiled within him, not through any gross passion for rule but in order that he may thus manifest himself to himself at the full.  He is as far as possible removed from that type of the worshipping spirit exhibited in Aprile, and in the poet Eglamor, whom Sordello foils and subdues in the contest of song.  The fame as a singer which comes suddenly to him draws Sordello out of his Goito solitude to the worldly society of Mantua, and his experiences of disillusion and half voluntary self-degradation are those which had been faintly shadowed forth in Pauline, and exhibited more fully—­and yet with a difference—­in the Basil experiences of Paracelsus.  Like the poet of Pauline, after his immersion in worldliness, Sordello again seeks solitude, and recovers a portion of his higher self; but solitude cannot content one who is unable to obtain the self-manifestation which his nature demands without the aid of others who may furnish an external body for the forces that lie suppressed within him.  Suddenly and unexpectedly the prospect of a political career opens before him.  May it not be that he will thus obtain what he needs, and find in the people the instrument of his own thoughts, his passions, his aspirations, his imaginings, his will?  May not the people become the body in which his spirit, with all its forces, shall incarnate itself?  Coming into actual acquaintance with the people for the first time, the sight of their multiform miseries, their sorrows, even their baseness lays hold of Sordello; it seems as if it were they who were about to make him their instrument, the voice through which their inarticulate griefs should find expression; he is captured by those whom he thought to capture.  By all his personal connections he is of the Imperial party—­a Ghibellin; but, studying the position of affairs, he becomes convinced that the cause of the Pope is one with the cause of the people.  At this moment vast possibilities of political power suddenly widen upon his view; Sordello, the minstrel, a poor archer’s son, is discovered to be in truth the only son of the great Ghibellin chieftain, Salinguerra; he is loved by Palma, who, with her youth and beauty, brings him eminent station, authority, and a passion of devoted ambition on his behalf; his father flings upon Sordello’s neck the baldric which constitutes him the Emperor’s representative in Northern Italy.  The heart and brain of Sordello become the field of conflict between fierce, contending forces.  All that is egoistic in his nature cries out for a life of pride and power and joy.  At best it is but little that he could ever do to serve the suffering multitude.  And yet should he falter because he cannot gain for them the results of time?  Is it not his part to take the single step in their service, though it can be no more than a step?  In the excitement of this supreme hour of inward strife Sordello dies; but he dies a victor; like Paracelsus he also has “attained”; the Imperial baldric is found cast below the dead singer’s feet.