The Two Kings, based on the myths of Edain in the ancient pagan Ireland, is Yeats’s long autobiographical narrative poem. This poem expresses not only the poet’s private love story but also his deep concern in the national affairs with realistic consciousness of responsibility. Therefore, in spite of its mysteriousness it shows that Yeats has traveled far into the actual world since his earlier narrative poems. In this poem Yeats adopted only the main part of the original story and changed its plot and reversed its ending on purpose. He reconstructed the original story and recreated it as a “universal” private mythos through imaginative embellishment and creative modification. Furthermore, by clothing each mythical character with multi-roles and -symbols, he succeeded in making the poem a piece of work with both individuality and universality. Through the symbolical behaviors of the characters, Yeats states his firm conviction that a man’s life should be determined by his own free will, and that the lovers’ happiness should dwell in their earthly life, not in their union after death. And the poet asserts that nothing is more important than the reliance and morality between human beings for our true life and happy love. In addition, the poet contends that a leader of a nation must deliver his subjects from their chronic oppression and poverty.

Ireland abounds in narrative stories, including mythologies, sagas, legends and folktales, handed down through many generations from the ancient pagan period. In Ireland, especially in the western country Sligo where W. B. Yeats spent the better part of his early days, one cannot go far without hearing the mystic stories of pagan gods, nymphs and ghosts. The Irish are very proud of their unique and traditional Celtic culture and they still believe that the supernatural beings haunt everywhere and intervene in their human affairs. Yeats was educated in England and greatly influenced by many English writers and poets. Yeats, however, born with Celtic spirit and encouraged by the patriot John O’Leary, determined to be a national poet. Therefore, he began to write his early romantic narratives and dramatic verses based on the ancient Irish myths and legends, following the two brilliant predecessors Samuel Ferguson and William Allingham. Besides, what is more important than anything else, he usually put his own life and his unrequited love for Maud Gonne by modifying their themes and symbols into the ancient stories. Thus he succeeded in creating utterly new myths much familiar not only to the Irish today but also to the modern people abroad. Hence he was a renowned myth-maker and -modifier of the age

Baile and Aillinn, based on a pagan myth of ancient Ireland, is a long narrative poem which expresses Yeats’s private love story along with his deep interest in his fatherland and its national literature. Naturally, Yeats enlarged the simple plot of the story which tells about the two lovers’ death and their going to live in Aengus’s land among the dead. He also partly created his own private myth in order to transmit his many-folded intent. By clothing each mythical character with a role and symbol appropriate for his purpose, he succeeded in making his poem overcome the limitation of private utterance and making it a poem with both individuality and universality. The death of Baile and Aillinn has a duplicate symbolic meaning. Firstly, their death is an inevitable ritual process to get an eternal beatitude through the union after death and a sort of sublimation of a tragic love, in which we can glimpse at the poet’s plaintive love for Gonne. Secondly, their death is a kind of ritual murder symbolizing a Messianism of the Irish desiring for liberation from inveterate poverty and oppression over time. In conclusion, Baile and Aillinn is an excellent piece showing Yeats’s seasoned poetic technique of creating a poem with new meaning through mythologizing with great subtlety not only his own autobiographical elements but also the national feelings of the Irish people.

The Old Age of Queen Maeve(1903) is a very short pure dramatic poem, which deals with Queen Maeve’s heroic episode related to the god of love Aengus’s love affair in the ancient pagan period of Ireland. In this work Yeats expresses his strong will to disinter almost forgotten ancient narratives and propagate them among the contemporary Irish people who are getting quite unfamiliar with them, and at the same time he expresses his admiration of his beloved Maud Gonne more overtly and proudly than in any other work by juxtaposing/overlapping her image with that of Queen Maeve. This poem, along with such long dramatic poems as The Wandering of Oisin(1889) and The Shadowy Waters(1906-12), belongs to the same group of narratives in that all of these are related to his unrequited sweetheart Gonne. However, The Old Age of Queen Maeve is somewhat different from those two in the manner the poet takes toward his beloved, and in this poem he deplores that she too will grow old and die though she is as great, beautiful and passionate a woman as Queen Maeve was. In those two longer poems the star-crossed lovers follow heartbreaking pattern of love―meeting only after their death. But in The Old Age of Queen Maeve the lovers are supposed to meet each other in this world eventually, however long time it will take, as Aengus was to meet his lover Caer by the help of Queen Maeve and her grandchildren. In this article the present writer intends to descry Yeats’s purpose of using the ancient Irish myths and his power of creating an individual mythology based on them, and interpret the symbolical meanings caused by the overlapped images of Maeve and Gonne.

Yeats started his earlier poetic life, trying to express everything of his life in his poetry. Naturally, all the characteristic elements of Yeats’s poetry are closely related with his own life and experiences. And some of the autobiographical elements which characterized his life and poetry are: his innate introspective, romantic disposition and strong imagination; teachings of his father who advocated artistic solipsism; his deep affection for ancient Irish legends and myths; his strong belief in mysticism and magic; his intense ideological propensity; his readings in Blake and Shelley; his acquaintances with Pre-Raphaelites; his unrequited love for Maud Gonne. The dominant notes of Yeats’s early romantic poetry are tinged with deep sorrow or pathos for the changes of the human world, elapsing of time, ungraspable and fading love, growing old, and coming death. Romantic ideologist as he was, he would stay in the pure ideological dimension where all would vanish out of human grasp. His seeking for the supernatural mythic world without conflict reflected another aspect of his escapism which was to end in vain. As a matter of course, his early poetry is a record of spiritual growth of an agonizing romantic escapist. On the other hand, Yeats succeeded in generalizing or objectifying his lyrics by adopting various symbols from the ancient Irish myths and legends. Besides, his early poetry contains many symbols, images, themes, and rhythms from which those of his later seasoned poems were to develop.