true vocation

You need not see what someone is doing
to know if it is his vocation,
you have only to watch his eyes:
A cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon
making a primary incision,
a clerk completing a bill of lading,
wear the same rapt expression,
forgetting themselves in a function.
How beautiful it is,
that eye-on-the-object look.

   −Auden, Horae Canonicae, 1954