You are not your job....

I've been reading EP Thompson's "The making of the English Working Class". Very interesting book, the 18th century is a part of British History that I'm less familiar with and the early 19th I haven't really looked at since my GCSE's. But there were two things that really struck me in the chapter about weavers.

Children's burial clubs, where each sunday school pupil contributed 1d(pence, i think) per week towards his own or a fellow pupil's funeral.

A 1772 poem by a weaver:
Yes, the day long, and in each evening gloom,
I meditated in the sounding loom...
Meanwhile, I wove the flow'ry waved web,
with fingers colder than the icy glebe;
And oftentimes, thro' the whole frame of man
Bleak chilling horrors, and a sickness ran.

It's no Rilke, but it has honesty and I think i just really like the last line.