tempter of the everlasting steppe.

That much is then settled for life and for poetry. And in that choice of
endless aspiration Browning confirms all that he thought, with regard to
half of his theory of life, in _Paracelsus_. This is his first thought
for life, and it is embodied in the whole of Sordello's career.
Sordello is never content with earth, either when he is young, or when
he passes into the world, or when he dies not having attained or been
already perfect--a thought which is as much at the root of romanticism
as of Christianity. Then comes the further question: To whom shall I
dedicate the service of my art? Who shall be my motive, the Queen whom I
shall love and write of; and he thinks of Sordello who asks that
question and who, for the time, answers "Palma," that is, the passion of
love.

"But now, shall I, Browning, take as my Queen"--and he symbolises his
thought in the girls he sees in the boats from his palace steps--"that
girl from Bassano, or from Asolo, or her from Padua; that is, shall I
write of youth's love, of its tragic or its comedy, of its darkness, joy
and beauty only? No, he answers, not of that stuff shall I make my work,
but of that sad dishevelled ghost of a girl, half in rags, with eyes
inveterately full of tears; of wild, worn, care-bitten, ravishing,
piteous, and pitiful Humanity, who begs of me and offers me her faded
love in the street corners. She shall be my Queen, the subject of my
song, the motive of my poetry. She may be guilty, warped awry from her
birth, and now a tired harlotry; but she shall rest on my shoulder and I
shall comfort her. She is false, mistaken, degraded, ignorant, but she
moves blindly from evil to good, and from lies to truth, and from
ignorance to knowledge, and from all to love; and all her errors prove
that she has another world in which, the errors being worked through,
she will develop into perfectness. Slowly she moves, step by step; but
not a millionth part is here done of what she will do at last. That is
the matter of my poetry, which, in its infinite change and hopes, I
shall express in my work. I shall see it, say what I have seen, and it
may be

Impart the gift of seeing to the rest.

Therefore I have made Sordello, thus far, with all his weakness and
wrong--

moulded, made anew
A Man, and give him to be turned and tried,
Be angry with or pleased at."

And then Browning severs himself from Sordello. After thi