Swift's Epitaph
About the text
Yeats first published this poem in 1933. It is out of copyright in Ireland and the EU, but in the United States it stays in copyright until the start of 2029, and this site is served partly from American servers. So for now we give the notes without the full text; it will appear here in 2029.
It begins: Swift has sailed into his rest
In brief
SummaryYeats's version of the Latin epitaph Jonathan Swift wrote for himself.
A six-line version of the Latin epitaph that Jonathan Swift wrote for his own tomb in St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, where he was dean. Swift has gone to his rest, the poem says, where the savage indignation that tormented him in life can no longer tear at his heart. It then turns on the reader, a traveller besotted with the world, and dares them to imitate him, because Swift served human liberty. Yeats keeps the shape of the Latin (the rest, the indignation, the challenge to the passer-by) but makes it shorter, blunter and more heroic.
Lines to remember
Imitate him if you dare,
Served human liberty.
Line by line
Lines 1 to 3Beyond indignation
Swift has sailed into his rest, a calm image of death as the end of a voyage. There the savage indignation that drove his satire can no longer lacerate, or tear, his breast. The violent verb shows how much his anger cost him while he lived.
Lines 4 to 6The challenge
Like an old tombstone, the epitaph speaks to the passer-by and dares the reader to imitate Swift. The traveller is "World-besotted", made foolish by worldly things, an insult Yeats added to the Latin. The last and shortest line gives the reason for Swift's greatness: he served human liberty.
Themes
Savage indignation
Swift's anger at injustice is the centre of the poem. It is presented not as a flaw but as the price of greatness: it tormented him, yet it drove his defence of liberty, and only death could end it. Yeats admired passionate anger in public life, and the poem honours rage that serves a noble cause.
Liberty and courage
The closing claim, that Swift served human liberty, recalls his writings against English misrule in Ireland, such as The Drapier's Letters and A Modest Proposal. The dare to imitate him implies that such service takes courage and brings suffering. The poem is a challenge to the reader as much as a tribute to the dead.
Death as rest
Death here is a release, not a defeat. The picture of Swift sailing to his rest suggests a ship reaching harbour after a hard voyage. The body that suffered anger is at peace, while Swift's example lives on in the inscription, speaking from the grave to every future reader.
Context
Jonathan Swift (1667 to 1745), author of Gulliver's Travels, was Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin and is buried there. He wrote his own epitaph in Latin, and it is cut on a tablet in the cathedral; its famous phrase "saeva indignatio" becomes Yeats's savage indignation. Yeats's poem is a free translation. It was first printed in the Dublin Magazine in 1931 and collected in The Winding Stair and Other Poems (Macmillan, 1933).
Swift mattered greatly to the older Yeats. He came to see Swift, Berkeley, Burke and Goldsmith as a great Anglo-Irish tradition to which he himself belonged, and names them together in "The Seven Sages" and "Blood and the Moon". He also wrote a play about Swift, The Words upon the Window-Pane (1930). The epitaph's fierce public voice fitted the kind of poet Yeats was becoming.
Form
Six short lines, mostly of seven syllables with a falling, trochaic beat, rhyming ABABCC. The last line is the shortest, so the poem ends on a stripped-down statement. The terse shape and the direct address to a passer-by suit an inscription meant to be cut in stone.
Studying this poem
What to focus on
- How Yeats adapts Swift's own Latin epitaph, and what his changes, such as "World-besotted", add.
- The presentation of Swift as a heroic figure whose anger served a noble cause.
- The tone of the poem: calm about death, yet fiercely challenging towards the living reader.
- How the compressed six-line form suits an epitaph meant to be carved in stone.
- Why Swift and the Anglo-Irish tradition mattered to Yeats in his later years.
Key quotations
sailed into his rest
Death is pictured as a voyage ending in harbour. The gentle verb contrasts with the violence of Swift's inner life and stresses that death has brought him peace at last.
Savage indignation
A direct rendering of the Latin "saeva indignatio". The phrase sums up Swift's fierce anger at injustice, which Yeats treats as the source of his greatness.
Imitate him if you dare,
The epitaph turns on the reader. "If you dare" suggests that Swift's kind of courage is rare and costly, not something to be copied lightly.
World-besotted traveller
Yeats's own addition to the Latin. The passer-by is dazed by worldly concerns, in contrast to Swift, who looked beyond self-interest to serve liberty.
Served human liberty.
The shortest line delivers the final verdict. Swift's legacy lies in public service, above all his defence of Irish rights, not in personal comfort or success.
