Sara Teasdale’s speaker remembers first meeting her beloved in April, when looking into his gray eyes felt like seeing the sea for the first time—vast, unfamiliar, and full of wonder. Four Aprils have passed, and the two of them still watch for the green returning to the willow boughs. But that shared, repeated spring has not made the eyes ordinary. Each time she glances up at them, the first shock of awe returns unchanged.
The mood is quiet and intimate, mixing spring’s renewal with the sea’s depth. The recurring comparison suggests that closeness has not worn love smooth. Instead, it keeps revealing something large and moving, as if the speaker is always standing at the edge of the same surprising sea. Gray eyes, like the sea, remain too deep to become merely familiar.