"Here I will rest," he says, "and do no more." But he only waits for a fresh impulse.
'Tis but a sailor's promise, weather-bound: "Strike sail, slip cable, here the bark be moored For once, the awning stretched, the poles assured! Noontide above; except the wave's crisp dash, Or buzz of colibri, or tortoise' splash, The margin's silent: out with every spoil Made in our tracking, coil by mighty coil, This serpent of a river to his head I' the midst! Admire each treasure, as we spread The bank, to help us tell our history Aright; give ear, endeavour to descry The groves of giant rushes, how they grew Like demons' endlong tresses we sailed through, What mountains yawned, forests to give us vent Opened, each doleful side, yet on we went Till ...

may that beetle (shake your cap) attest The springing of a land-wind from the West!" -- Wherefore?
Ah yes, you frolic it to-day! To-morrow, and the pageant moved away Down to the poorest tent-pole, we and you Part company: no other may pursue Eastward your voyage, be informed what fate Intends, if triumph or decline await The tempter of the everlasting steppe! This, from Book iii., is the best because it is closer than the rest to the matter in hand; but how much better it might have been! How curiously overloaded it is, how difficult what is easy has been made! The fault of these illustrations is the fault of the whole poem.
_Sordello_ is obscure, Browning's idolaters say, by concentration of thought.

It is rather obscure by want of that wise rejection of unnecessary thoughts which is the true concentration.

It is obscure by a reckless misuse of the ordinary rules of language.

It is obscure by a host of parentheses introduced to express thoughts which are only suggested, half-shaped, and which are frequently interwoven with parentheses introduced into the original parentheses.