He is sorely tempted by the love of Palma and by the power offered him to give up that cause or to palter with it; yet in the end his soul resists the temptation.

But the part of his life, in which he has neglected his body, has left him without physical strength; and now the struggle of his soul to do right in this spiritual crisis gives the last blow to his weakened frame.

His heart breaks, and he dies at the moment when he dimly sees the true goal of life.

This is a masterpiece of the irony of the Fate-Goddess; and a faint suspicion of this irony, underlying life, even though Browning turns it round into final good, runs in and out of the whole poem in a winding thread of thought.
This is the historical background of the poem, and in front of it are represented Sordello, his life, his development as an individual soul, and his death.

I have, from one point of view, slightly analysed the first two books of the poem, but to analyse the whole would be apart from the purpose of this book.