The Earth in Seamus Heaney`s Early Poems: The Images of the Will and the Repose Abstract Chang-Gyu Seong (Korea National Open Univ.) Motivated with Bachelard`s terms “four elements theory,” “phenomenology of images” and “material imagination,” the purpose of this study is to present the earth images in Heaney`s early poetry and to demonstrate the elemental mechanism and dialectics of the earth images. Based upon Bachelard`s poetics, Heaney`s earth is divided into arable land and burial place. The former is to symbolize Irish survival and coexistence with daily repetition. The latter as a swamp is to represent Irish chronicle and refugee with historical remnants including the corpses of the deceased. Besides, a swamp image is the combination of the earth and water, so creates maternal and feminine images and embodies comfortable reposes and death images in their extremity. The juxtaposition and intersection of reciprocal images repetitively appear in Heaney`s early poetry. Heaney may remember Bachelard`s intimate immensity, dynamics of combining contrary material images and confrontation & interconnection inside an image itself. The dialectics of outside and inside & the phenomenology of roundness studied by Bachelard can be understood in the same context in Heaney`s early poetry.