Empedocles on Etna is a dramatic poem or closet drama in two acts written by the Victorian poet-critic Matthew Arnold and first published, anonymously, in 1852.

[3]And after a long lecture, in which he warns Pausanias against various of the 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: I say: Fear not!

[3]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?"

[3] 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?

[3] 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.