This kind of cold seeps into your lungs, Makes you wrap your fingers around your thumbs, Burns as it freezes, and proves the other side Of ice is fire, as painful to abide. Perhaps, like fire, this, too, shall purify. Fire'd scorch off the sludge in which I lie; This cold could make it freeze and fall away So it shatters, and over me loses its sway. What would it leave of me, once detached? And, would it be shattered- or, rather, hatched? If the cold frees me, why should it not Also free that in which I am caught? Better to part from it, even if only, Against the frigid snow, to clearly see My shame, my triumph- my baggage now out Of my lee, where the ice-air and I can put it to rout.