It is obscure by the worst punctuation I ever came across, but this was improved in the later editions.

It is obscure by multitudinous fancies put in whether they have to do with the subject or not, and by multitudinous deviations within those fancies.

It is obscure by Browning's effort to make words express more than they are capable of expressing.
It is no carping criticism to say this of Browning's work in _Sordello_, because it is the very criticism his after-practice as an artist makes.
He gave up these efforts to force, like Procrustes, language to stretch itself or to cut itself down into forms it could not naturally take; and there is no more difficulty in most of his earlier poems than there is in _Paracelsus_.

Only a little of the Sordellian agonies remains in them, only that which was natural to Browning's genius.

The interwoven parentheses remain, the rushes of invention into double and triple illustrations, the multiplication of thought on thought; but for these we may even be grateful.