A New Heaven
"A New Heaven" is a sonnet by Wilfred Owen, written in England before Owen had seen active service in the trenches of France, probably in September 1916. Some MS drafts bear differing dedications. The poem was probably written in Milford Camp, Surrey, which was a part of Witley Camp.
The poem's title echoes a line from Revelation 21:1, "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth". The poem is written from the point of view of a soldier in France wondering about death; since they have no chance of gaining entry into any mythological afterlife, they call on the Channel ferry - rather than that over the Styx - to take them home and find remembrance and wholeness in their mothers' tears.
Owen's biographer Dominic Hibberd draws parallels with Owen's 1917 poem "Anthem for Doomed Youth", finding a Romantic nostalgia in both which was only expunged in the later poems written at Craiglockhart and after.
