Again and again, picking mulberry leaves, not lamenting starving for raising silkworms.

They eat the leaves in your basket and reward you with silk for your loom.

With silk in return, where your gauze is woven.

Poor girl, she raises silkworms but dresses not in silk; ‘tis lamentable you produce silk and die for others.

— Pan Wei, “Ode to the Silkworm Farming Girl”

The shuttle flies, the loom creaks,

Assiduously we weave day and night—

Old Germany, we weave your shroud,

We weave into it a three-fold curse,

We weave; we weave!

— Heine, Heinrich. The Silesian Weavers. Trans. Scott Horton.A