Cantata
O Fortune,
like the moon
you are constantly changing,
ever growing and waning;
hateful life now oppresses
and then soothes
as fancy takes it;
poverty and power
it melts them like ice.
Fate - monstrous and empty,
you whirling wheel,
you are malevolent,
well-being is vain and always fades to nothing,
shadowed and veiled
you plague me too;
now through the game
I bring my bare back to your villainy.
Fate, in health and virtue,
is against me
driven on and weighted down,
always enslaved.
So at this hour without delay
pluck the vibrating strings;
since Fate strikes down the strong man,
everyone weep with me!
