the image that smith attached to the poem shows the form of a girl from the waist up with her wet hair hanging over her face. although the image goes with a poem about a man drowning, the girl's expression appears incongruous with the text of the poem as it forms what severin describes as a "mysterious smile". jannice thaddeus suggests that the speaker of the poem, like other figures in smith's works, changes from male to female as part of a theme of androgyny that exists in many of the poems found in "selected poems." the sketch differs from the poem in that the figure is of a woman rather than a man, and smith scholar laura severin suggests that the figure might be mary, a character in another poem by smith entitled "cool as a cucumber." the drawing was used as the accompanying image for the poem "the frozen lake" in "selected poems," a self-edited compilation of smith's works published in 1962.