Celebrate the ties that bind us: 10 striking poems on unity

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Have you ever felt the powerful connection that brings people together, no matter their differences?

Unity is a theme that resonates deeply in poetry, capturing the essence of shared experiences and collective strength.

Here are 10 striking poems that offer a unique perspective on unity, inspiring us to appreciate the beauty of togetherness in our lives.

Let’s jump right in!

My favorite poem on unity

#1 “Unity” by Violet Jacob

I Dreamed

I dreamed that life and time and space were one,
And the pure trance of dawn;
The increase drawn
From all the journeys of the travelling sun,
And the long mysteries of sound and sight,
The whispering rains,
And far, calm waters set in lonely plains,
And cry of birds at night.

I dreamed that these and love and death were one,
And all eternity,
The life to be
Therewith entwined, throughout the ages spun;
And so with Grief, my playmate; him I knew
One with the rest, –
One with the mounting day, the east and west –
Lord, is it true?
Lord, do I dream? Methinks a key unlocks
Some dungeon door, in thrall of blackened towers,
On ecstasies, half hid, like chill white flowers
Blown in the secret places of the rocks.

This poem is my top choice for exploring the theme of unity because it beautifully intertwines life, time, and space into a singular experience.

The imagery evokes a sense of connection among all elements of existence, suggesting that love and death are part of an eternal cycle.

It captures the essence of how everything in the universe is linked, creating a profound sense of harmony.

9 more poems on unity

#2 “Dupont’s Round Fight” by Herman Melville

In Time

In time and measure perfect moves
All Art whose aim is sure;
Evolving rhyme and stars divine
Have rules, and they endure.
Nor less the Fleet that warred for Right,
And, warring so, prevailed,
In geometric beauty curved,
And in an orbit sailed.
The rebel at Port Royal felt
The Unity overawe,
And rued the spell. A type was here,
And victory of Law.

#3 “The New Year” by Carrie Williams Clifford

The New

The New Year comes—fling wide, fling wide the door
Of Opportunity! the spirit free
To scale the utmost heights of hopes to be,
To rest on peaks ne’er reached by man before!
The boundless infinite let us explore,
To search out undiscovered mystery,
Undreamed of in our poor philosophy!
The bounty of the gods upon us pour!
Nay, in the New Year we shall be as gods:
No longer apish puppets or dull clods
Of clay; but poised, empowered to command,
Upon the Etna of New Worlds we’ll stand—
This scant earth-raiment to the winds will cast—
Full richly robed as supermen at last!

#4 “Union” by George Pope Morris

This Word

This word beyond all others,
Makes us love our country most,
Makes us feel that we are brothers,
And a heart-united host!–
With hosanna let our banner
From the house-tops be unfurled,
While the nation holds her station
With the mightiest of the world!
Take your harps from silent willows,
Shout the chorus of the free;
“States are all distinct as billows,
Union one–as is the sea!”

From the land of groves that bore us
He’s a traitor who would swerve!
By the flag now waving o’er us
We the compact will preserve!
Those who gained it and sustained it,
Were unto each other true,
And the fable well is able
To instruct us what to do!
Take your harps from silent willows,
Shout the chorus of the free;
“States are all distinct as billows,
Union one–as is the sea!”

#5 “The Union” by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Three In

I
Three in one, but one in three,
God, who girt her with the sea,
Bade our Commonweal to be:
Nought, if now not one.
Though fraud and fear would sever
The bond assured for ever,
Their shameful strength shall never
Undo what heaven has done.

II
South and North and West and East
Watch the ravens flock to feast,
Dense as round some death-struck beast,
Black as night is black.
Stand fast as faith together
In stress of treacherous weather
When hounds and wolves break tether
And Treason guides the pack.

III
Lovelier than thy seas are strong,
Glorious Ireland, sword and song
Gird and crown thee: none may wrong,
Save thy sons alone.
The sea that laughs around us
Hath sundered not but bound us:
The sun’s first rising found us
Throned on its equal throne.

IV
North and South and East and West,
All true hearts that wish thee best
Beat one tune and own one quest,
Staunch and sure as steel.
God guard from dark disunion
Our threefold State’s communion,
God save the loyal Union,
The royal Commonweal!

#6 “Unity” by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Space Is

Space is ample, east and west,
But two cannot go abreast,
Cannot travel in it two:
Yonder masterful cuckoo
Crowds every egg out of the nest,
Quick or dead, except its own;
A spell is laid on sod and stone,
Night and Day were tampered with,
Every quality and pith
Surcharged and sultry with a power
That works its will on age and hour.

#7 “Absolute” by César Vallejo

Now Youve

The color of old clothes. July in shadows
and August just cut down, and a hand
made of water that grafted its bad fruit
onto a pine of resin and languor.

Now you’ve dropped anchor, dark clothes—
you dampen with the sumptuous scents
of time, of brevities . . . and I have sung of
festive tendencies turned upside down.

But can’t you do something about death,
Lord, about limits, about all that ends?
Oh, this wound the color of old clothes,
it splits, it smells of scalded honey.

Oh, exalted unity—how one thing stands for all.
Love against space and love against time.
The singular beat of the heart,
it has but a single rhythm: God.

And as the boundaries shrug
in disdain both coarse and insurmountable,
a stream of serpents is scattering
upon the damsel abundance of 1.
A wrinkling, a shadow.

#8 “The Union Oath” by A. H. Laidlaw

By The

By the Revolution’s dead,
By their Blood in battle shed,
By the Earth that drank their gore,
By the Heaven in which they soar,
By the Union Stripe and Star,
By the God of Righteous War,
Swear to conquer, or to die!
Swear to conquer,
Swear to conquer,
Swear to conquer now, or die!

By the Revolution’s dead,
By their Blood in battle shed,
By the Earth that drank their gore,
By the Heaven in which they soar,
By the Union Stripe and Star,
By the God of Righteous War,
We will conquer now, or die!
We will conquer!
We will conquer!
We will conquer now, or die!

#9 “The Union” by Alfred Noyes

How Should

(1917)

You that have gathered together the sons of all races,
And welded them into one,
Lifting the torch of your Freedom on hungering faces
That sailed to the setting sun;

You that have made of mankind in your own proud regions
The music of man to be,
How should the old earth sing of you, now, as your legions
Rise to set all men free?

How should the singer that knew the proud vision and loved it,
In the days when not all men knew,
Gaze through his tears, on the light, now the world has approved it;
Or dream, when the dream comes true?

How should he sing when the Spirit of Freedom in thunder
Speaks, and the wine-press is red;
And the sea-winds are loud with the chains that are broken asunder
And nations that rise from the dead?

Flag of the sky, proud flag of that wide communion,
Too mighty for thought to scan;
Flag of the many in one, and that last world-union
That kingdom of God in man;

Ours was a dream, in the night, of that last federation,
But yours is the glory unfurled–
The marshalled nations and stars that shall make one nation
One singing star of the world.

#10 “Unity In Space” by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

Take Me

Take me away into a storm of snow
So white and soft, I feel no deathly chill,
But listen to the murmuring overflow
Of clouds that fall in many a frosty rill!

Take me away into the sunset’s glow,
That holds a summer in a glorious bloom;
Or take me to the shadowed woods that grow
On the sky’s mountains, in the evening gloom!

Give me an entrance to the limpid lake
When moonbeams shine across its purity!
A life there is, within the life we take
So commonly, for which ‘t were well to die.

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