At the year Yeats died(1939) Heaney was born. It seems to say a meaningful relationship of the two poets who had achieved a great poetic success at the early and later 20th century. Yeats’ poems are full of folk tales and heroes of old Ireland to inspire their rational pride. Heaney also tried to take poetic themes from Irish local nature. The lake of Yeats and the bog of Heaney are good examples of their localism. In Yeats’ poems, the lake is a symbol of his love for the native and a kind of spiritual home where young Yeats fell in deep imagination of fairy stories. But Yeats did not try to express his homeland in realistic style. For Heaney, the bog is a good symbol which tells the tragic Irish history and people. Its hardening crusts on the surface look like those of bruises of tragic history of Ireland. The deep sinking bog is also telling the poor Irish lives. In his “The death of a Naturalist” and “Private Helicon” we can feel his typical localism. In “Digging” and “Follower” we can read the love for his family. Comparing these two poets we can conclude that Yeats is rather dreamy and Heaney realistic.

• 신원철(강원대) | Shin, Wonchul