Alone! On this charred, blackened, melancholy waste, Crowned by the awful peak, Etna’s great mouth, Round which the sullen vapor rolls,--alone! Pausanias is far hence, and that is well, For I must henceforth speak no more with man. He has his lesson too, and that debt’s paid; And the good, learned, friendly, quiet man, May bravelier front his life, and in himself Find henceforth energy and heart. But I,-- The weary man, the banished citizen, Whose banishment is not his greatest ill, Whose weariness no energy can reach, And for whose hurt courage is not the cure,-- What should I do with life and living more? No, thou art come too late, Empedocles! And the world hath the day, and must break thee, Not thou the world. With men thou canst not live: Their thoughts, their ways, their wishes, are not thine. And being lonely thou art miserable; For something has impaired thy spirit’s strength, And dried its self-sufficing fount of joy. Thou canst not live with men nor with thyself, O sage! O sage! Take, then, the one way left; And turn thee to the elements, thy friends, Thy well-tried friends, thy willing ministers, And say: Ye servants, hear Empedocles, Who asks this final service at your hands! Before the sophist-brood hath overlaid The last spark of man’s consciousness with words; Ere quite the being of man, ere quite the world, Be disarrayed of their divinity; Before the soul lose all her solemn joys, And awe be dead, and hope impossible, And the soul’s deep eternal night come on,-- Receive me, hide me, quench me, take me home! _He advances to the edge of the crater. Smoke and fire break forth with a loud noise, and CALLICLES is heard below singing_:-- The lyre’s voice is lovely everywhere; In the court of gods, in the city of men, And in the lonely rock-strewn mountain-glen, In the still mountain air.