Abstract: The Book of Poetry serves as an important cultural wellspring for the patriotic sentiments of the Chinese nation. During the era of The Book of Poetry, or the 11^th through the 6^th centuries B.C.E., “patriotism” was not a semantically fixed concept. Instead, it was a dynamic notion continuously constructed and expressed within the overarching framework of the tianxia (all under heaven) worldview of the Zhou Dynasty (1046 B.C.E. - 256 B.C.E.) that evolved alongside historical circumstances and varied across social strata. From the ruling discourse of the king of the previous Shang Dynasty (1600 B.C.E. - 1046 B.C.E.) as “the One Man” to the tianxia order of the Zhou Dynasty, the connotation of patriotic sentiment underwent a transformation - from the absolute monopoly of royal power under theocratic politics to the emergence of a dual identification. Within the purview of the Zhou's tianxia concept, patriotic sentiment bifurcated into two levels: “love for a single state” and “love for all under heaven.” The relative emphasis on these two aspects waxed and waned in accordance with the dynamic evolution of power relations between the Zhou royal house and the feudal lords, a dynamic concretely reflected in the verses of The Book of Poetry. From the perspective of thematology, the war poems and sacrificial poems in The Book of Poetry strengthen the individual's sense of belonging to the political community. They constitute a literary expression of the mutual permeation and integration, at a practical level, of the ethics of one state and the consciousness of a greater tianxia.

Key words: The Book of Poetry, patriotism, worldview of tianxia (all under heaven), thematology, the worldview change from “the one man” to “all under heaven”