At last one day, wandering from Mantua, he finds himself in his old environment, in the mountain cup where Goito and the castle lie.

And the old dream, awakened by the old associations, that he was Apollo, Lord of Song, rushed back upon him and enwrapped him wholly.

He feels, in the blessed silence, that he is no longer what he has been of late, a pettish minstrel meant To wear away his soul in discontent, Brooding on fortune's malice, but himself once more, freed from the world of Mantua; alone again, but in his loneliness really more lost than he was at Mantua, as we soon find out in the third book.
I return, in concluding this chapter, to the point which bears most clearly on Browning as the poet of art.

The only time when Sordello realises what it is to be an artist is when, swept out of himself by the kindled emotion of the crowd at the _Court of Love_ and inspired also by the true emotion of Eglamor's song, which has been made because he loved it--his imagination is impassioned enough to shape for man the thing within him, outside of himself, and to sing for the joy of singing--having forgotten himself in mankind, in their joy and in his own.
But it was little good to him.

When he stole home to Goito in a dream, he sat down to think over the transport he had felt, why he felt it, how he was better than Eglamor; and at last, having missed the whole use of the experience (which was to draw him into the service of man within the limits of life but to always transcend the limits in aspiration), he falls away from humanity into his own self again; and perfectly happy for the moment, but lost as an artist and a man, lies lazy, filleted and robed on the turf, with a lute beside him, looking over the landscape below the castle and fancying himself Apollo.