But this I promise at the waking,
Old joys, and sorrows ripened to a mellow heart.
To those who would peer into the other land these are perhaps the most important lines she has given. But what does she mean by “sorrows ripened to a mellow heart?” She was asked to make that plainer and she said:
“That that hath flitted hence be sorrows of earth, and ahere be ripened and thine. Love alost be sorrow of earth and dwell ahere.”
She thus makes these lines an answer to the question put before:
What! Should I search in vain
To find a sorrow that had fleeted hence
Afore my coming and found it not?
These are the sorrows that are “ripened to a mellow heart,” and she was asked if there were new sorrows to be borne in that other life. She replied:
“Nay. Earth be a home of sorrow’s dream. For sorrow be but dream of the soul asleep. ’Tis wake (death) that setteth free.”