Strong Draughts of Their Refreshing Minds

Strong Draughts of Their Refreshing Minds - meaning Summary

Intellect as Sustaining Draught

Dickinson compares the mind’s nourishment to a potent drink that sustains across hardship. Mental refreshment—thought, memory, or inner life—enables endurance through barrenness where ordinary sustenance fails. The speaker likens this resilience to the camel’s ability to travel with scant water, and calls inward intellectual life an "Hermetic Mind" whose concentrated stimulus powers movement and elasticity. The poem presents contemplation as an essential, solitary source of strength in adversity.