Swift's Epitaph

Swift's Epitaph - context Summary

Epitaph for Jonathan Swift

Yeats' short epitaph commemorates Jonathan Swift, written as a funeral inscription and included in The Tower (1928). It notes that Swift's "savage indignation" can no longer wound him and presents him as a model for the "world-besotted traveller," urging imitation. The lines cast Swift as a defender of human liberty whose fierce moral energy survives death and challenges readers to serve the same cause.