Natural Image in Yeats's early poetry shows the relationship and tensionbetween nature and consciousness. In Romantic poetry, natural image comes to bethe most prominent dimension of the style. Natural image mediates between naturalobject and human consciousness and becomes an critical indicator of the problematiccrisis related with the status of poetic language. Assuming the pantheistic nostalgiatoward nature and the ontological primacy of the natural object, poetic consciousnesscompares poetic language to the natural object and desires to give poetic languagethe stability and substantiality of the natural object. However, poetic language whichoriginates from nothingness differs from the natural object which is an epiphany, anatural emanation of a transcendental principle. Due to the ontological differencebetween them, poetic language fails to get the status of the natural object. Theattempt to overcome the failure of the mimetic natural image leads to theself-conscious natural image. This conscious natural image belongs to the tradition ofsymbolism. Within the image nature and consciousness are mutually transformed andunited. Now nature becomes the starting point and the mirror which reflects acts ofconsciousness. The self-reflective image is a reflection of consciousness which isreflected on the nature-as-mirror. It needs the natural object as its starting point andhas no material substance; therefore, it fails to possess itself as its object and facesthe narcissistic predicament in which consciousness is alienated from nature. Due tothe intrinsic discrepancy of the natural image, the hope to unite nature andconsciousness is frustrated. Consciousness still belongs to nature and poetic languagebecomes to face the crisis of sterility and extinction. This study considers thedialectic between nature and consciousness through the natural image of Yeats's early poetry.