Goodbye is too good a word

Some excerpts from my favorite Auden piece, Prospero to Ariel, from The Sea and the Mirror, a collection of poems that serves as a commentary for Shakespeare's The Tempest.
This is easily one of my favorite Auden pieces. I hope that you'll manage to come across it someday soon.

I am glad I did not recover my dukedom till I do not want it.

I am glad I have freed you so at last I can really believe I shall die/For under your influence, dying is inconceivable

The lonely and unhappy are very much alive.

I surrender this fascinating counsel/To the silent dissolution of the sea/Which misuses nothing because it values nothing/Whereas man overvalues everything

And seducers are sincerely puzzled at being unable to love/What they are able to possess/So long ago, in an open boat, I wept at giving a city/Common warmth and touching substance/for a gift in dealing with shadows

It is only that youth is still able to believe/It will get away with anything, while age/Knows only too well that it has got away with nothing

Now, Ariel, I am that I am, your late and lonely master/ Who knows what magic is:- the power to enchant/That comes from disillusion

What the books can teach one is that most desires end up in stinking ponds...

Thick-headed goodness for once is not a bore

And no one but you is reliably informative on hell/ As you whistle and skip past the poisonous/ Resentments scuttle over your unrevolted feet/And even the uncontrollable vertigo/Because it can scent no shame, is unobliged to strike

Today, I am free and no longer need your freedom: You, I suppose, will be off now to look for likely victims; Crowds chasing ankles, lone men stalking glory, Some feverish young rebel among amiable flowers

A fly-weight hermit in a dream/Of gardens that time is forever outside.

Are you malicious by nature? I don't know/Perhaps only incapable of doing nothing or of being by yourself/And, for all your wry faces, may secretly be anxiousand miserable without a master to need for the work you need.

Are all you tricks a test? If so, I hope you find, next time, Someone in whom you cannot spot the weakness Through which you will corrupt him with your charm

TO HATE NOTHING AND TO ASK NOTHING FOR ITS LOVE.

We did it, Ariel, between us/ You found on me a wish for absolute devotion/ Result- his wreck that sprawls in the weeds and will not be repaired

I SHALL GO KNOWING AND INCOMPETENT INTO MY GRAVE.

Now our partnership is dissolved, I feel so peculiar As if I had been on a drunk since I was born And suddenly now, and for the first time, am cold sober, With all my unanswered wishes and unwashed days stacked up all around my life; as if through the ages I had dreamed about some tremendous journey I was taking... And now, in my old age, I wake and this journey really exists, And I have actually to take it, inch by inch, Alone and on foot, without a cent in my pocket, Through a universe where time is not foreshortened, No animals talk, AND THERE IS NEITHER FLOATING NOR FLYING.

Can I learn to suffer without saying something ironic or funny On suffering?

Perhaps by the time death pounces his stumping question, I shall be getting to know the difference between moonshine and daylight...

I see you starting to fidget. I forgot. To you That doesn't matter... O Ariel, Ariel, How I shall miss you. Enjoy your element. Goodbye.