The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story’s finished, what’s the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day’s vanity, the night’s remorse.

-Yeats

(I’m over at the DePaul library right now trying to finish up a very long technical paper about a specific aspect of Oracle databases called services… and I read that poem during a five minute break. It struck me. And the more I reflect on it, the more profound it seems. Especially in the light of some of the frustrations I’ve personally been struggling with lately.)

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