Essential Oils Are Wrung

Essential Oils Are Wrung - meaning Summary

Private Preservation of Beauty

The poem contrasts natural, public processes with intimate, mechanical means of preserving what would otherwise fade. Dickinson uses the image of rose attar being wrung out "by Screws" rather than by the sun to suggest that preservation of scent, memory, or feeling requires deliberate, sometimes burdensome effort. The rose itself decays, but a kept extract in a woman’s drawer keeps summer alive for her even after she has lain down among rosemary. The poem reads as a reflection on private keepsakes and the work needed to hold on to fleeting beauty or consolation.