The poem takes the form of a dramatic composition, which possesses almost no plot or drama whatever. There are only three characters—
Callicles, "a young Harp-player";
Pausanias, "a Physician", and Empedocles. Empedocles, addressing Pausanias, counsels him as a faithful father would his own son: And after a long lecture, in which he warns Pausanias against various obstacles in the voyage of life, he sums up the whole matter by giving him that sage advice which the aged philosopher could not take to himself: In the second act Empedocles is all alone on the summit of Etna, that "charr'd, blacken'd, melancholy waste, crown'd by the awful peak," contemplating himself as the old and "weary man, the banished citizen," and deeply questioning "what should I do with life and living more?" He feels that he has outgrown the age in which he moves; he thinks that the people among whom he lives are like so many children, and he pants to be free from them. They would, no doubt, as he knows, gladly welcome him back amongst them; for he had in his day rendered them many valuable services, and cured diseases that
erst had been considered incurable; but
cui bono? ('who benefits?').'''' They would haunt him till "absence from himself," or what he elsewhere terms the "soul's deep eternal night"—dotage—came on, and he would fly back to solitude again to recover his strength, while at last "only death would cut his oscillations short."'''' In the midst of gloomy reverie of this description he pauses a while, and then bursts forth: '' Then appealing to the elements, the favourite subject of his life study, to receive him and save him—for no other hope he had—he plunges into the crater of vomiting flame and smoke.'
Thus ends the life of the sage; and the drama itself is wound up by a song to Apollo from Callicles, who has been ensconced in a hiding place below to charm the old philosopher with his harp.' == Textual history ==