Abstract: Seamus Deane and Richard Kearney contend that Yeats's nationalism reveals the negative and destructive side of mythification and mystification. Declan Kiberd, in his Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Ireland, points out that Yeats manifests in his early poetry the romantic and modernist nationalism in his search for the unique Irish forms and styles. It is my contention that what Yeats has long suggested is that Ireland should know herself and her history by self-questioning whether Ireland has maintained the history of cultural nationalism, deconstructing traditional Irish nationalism in his search for the alternative diverse and inclusive cross-cultural nationalism. Seamus Heaney reckons Yeats's poetry and positions himself in the genealogy of the Irish “poetic tradition.” The new cross-cultural nationalism centering and decentering around the interlocking gyres of poetry and poetics goes beyond the nation which postcolonial, postnational, transnational renditions fail to grapple with. From this perspective, Yeats and Heaney could, and the poets of future generation will, be able to commit themselves to the poetic tradition of “vision of reality,” erupting their creative energy in the midst of troubled times and the irony of civilization.

Key words: Yeats, Heaney, vision of reality, cross-cultural nationalism, spiritualism