Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
Time, who has made you into this much-adored and gorgeous being, will eventually turn nasty on you and undo all his own handiwork. Time turns summer into winter and ruins all its plans: stops sap with frost and gets rid of all the lovely leaves. Beauty turns to bareness everywhere.
Before this happens, if we don't take the perfumes of the summer and bottle them in glass jars, we’d be quite bereft of both the beauty of the summer and the means to remember it by.
Flowers turned into perfume may be crushed and have lost their physical looks, but their essence still lives on.