"She smiled:" The use of the smile as an indicator of love seems a risky choice. There are many possible states or events that can induce a smile--as a sign of love or deeply felt emotions for another person, it seems to me a very weak indicator. The smile is too ubiquitous, too prone to overvaluation. As a way of visualizing the metaphors which follow this phrase, it is, however, rather appropriate: The smile is transitory--it comes on unbidden, without effort, and disappears just as readily.
"Lightning flashed:" The analog of lightning for the beloved's smile suggests an instantaneous change in the lover's mindset rather than a gradually evolving romantic infatuation. It is a very appealing image, offering the potential for a radical change of state that might alter one's life course dramatically in a matter of seconds. It also suggests transience, a bright flash illuminating the sky for only a brief moment before returning the lover into a state of darkness. This might perhaps be akin to the fickleness of the beloved's attitude toward the lover, the attraction she feels being only momentary, to be replaced just as quickly with dislike or indifference. In this case, the lightning is a fire that produces light but no warmth. It might provide some insight to the lover or break him out of an emotional stupor, but it may not necessarily portend what he thinks it does. This transience can also said to be in line with the idea of a continual renewal of the image and the impossibility of its possession (Sells xxvii).
"I couldn't tell:" This concerns the notion of uncertainty inherent to love--uncertainty as to where one stands with the beloved, uncertainty about the emotions stirring within the lover's and the beloved's hearts, uncertainty about who one is or would or could be if he were to merge with the beloved. Here, the lover is uncertain about the particular quality in the beloved's smile that gives it its transformative power. The intention behind the smile appears to be hidden from the lover, though its effect on him is very much in full view. I find parallels here with the "Bewildered" poem where the lover is similarly in a state of uncertainty.
"That split the night:" The night here is a metaphor for the lover's spiritual or emotional barrenness. It recalled for me the notion of the "dark night of the soul" from Christian mysticism, the idea of a spiritual crisis or difficult period in one's life that must be overcome. Stripped of its religious overtones, love here stands in as the purifying or clarifying force that will set the lover's soul at ease and provide a path forward. The verb "split" here, as with the verb "flashed" which preceded it, suggests this is to be an instantaneous process rather than gradual, a sudden casting off of old modes of thinking, a tear in the fabric of the existential dilemma that plagues the lover. This would perhaps represent the death of the ego, or fana as Sells describes it in the introduction (xxvii).
"I live on:" It is difficult to say what the lover's meaning is in this line. He appears conflicted about the fact that he has endured the loss of his beloved. He lives on--is it a statement of fact, of regret? The following line suggests the latter, but it might also be read as a sign of great resilience.
"In living die:" The pairing of antonyms here ("live" and "die") is intentional and meant to convey that life is both physically and metaphorically a process of death. Physical in the sense that all human bodies from the moment of birth are in a state of continual decay which has its endpoint fixed at a certain hour on a certain day in a certain season. Metaphorical in the sense that for some, the process of living, and dealing with the indignities and pains that life brings with it, is its own form of death. I am reminded here of Hamlet's well-known soliloquy:
"Farewell to her, then:" This conveys that the lover no longer has access to the beloved, but the way it is delivered suggests a sort of defiance on the part of the lover. He cannot have her, so farewell, sent on her way with a rude gesture by which the lover hopes to cauterize his wounds. It is noteworthy in its apparent simplicity: Farewell! I wash my hands of thee. That is all. But the reader knows that is not all. The beloved will return in images to haunt him. The expression is traditionally used for an amicable parting ("I hope that you fare well"), but it is not likely that the lover's parting was either amicable or willed, nor that her rejection of him has not spawned a great deal of animosity.
"To patience, farewell:" To love is to become awash in time. The pleasure the beloved brings does away with notions of time. The loved man is too concerned with securing and enjoying his possession, too immersed in the gentleness of her embrace, to allow restlessness any room within his soul. With her loss, so the loss of patience. But the line here suggests more than this: It is also a hardening of the lover's soul, a statement of future unwillingness to invest himself in another again only to endure further heartbreak.
"Gaze:" A gaze can be thought of as anodyne, particularly when coming from a lover, but it might also have an element of danger in it. The context here with the gaze being "cast" suggests something sinister or alchemical. Upon first reading, I thought of Medusa and her petrifying gaze. Medusa was originally conceived as a beautiful woman turned ugly by Neptune, who gave her a coiffure of serpents. This juxtaposition of beauty and vileness is something of a cynical take on femininity. The imagery conjured might be said to be that of an aggressive seductress, though this notion is immediately dispensed with in the line that follows.
"Fawn gazelle:" The gazelle seems to be a motif in many of these poems. The fawn is innocence incarnate: Wide-eyed, vigilant, vulnerabale, in need of protection. The gaze referenced earlier then has been transmuted from stone back into flesh, a sort of Daphne and Apollo in reverse. The gaze of innocence entices the lover, triggering his instinct to nurture and protect.
"Glint:" A glint is a momentary flash of light. It might reference the glittering eyes of a lover in an amorous reverie, but there is no sense of continuity in the term. A glint is more akin to a spark, something temporary and sharp, like the glint of a steel blade. The image it conjures is a quick burst of violent energy that can only be seen from certain angles or in certain contexts, a metaphor for the hidden or unseen aspect of love that carries with it the potential for great pain.
"Obsidian:" The choice of obsidian to describe the beloved's eyes alludes to the gaze in the first line. We are back in the realm of stone, now the hard, black obsidian. Stone not only suggests a quality of impenetrability and frigidity, but the blackness of obsidian also calls to mind demonic imagery: a creature with solid-black eyes, an unnatural, unearthly and malevolant being.
The poet in this stanza appears to be confusing the reader's sense of perception. The rapid oscillation between innocence and its opposite is a way of showing the dual nature of love. The idea here is that pleasure and pain are intertwined, inextricably so. One cannot have love without sorrow, innocence without conniving, warmth without the looming threat of the ice storm. It is this duality which gives love its potency and amplifies the lover's sense of longing.