O Fortuna from Orff's Carmina Burana (1937)
O Fortune, like the moon you are changeable,
ever waxing and waning; hateful life
first 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 is against me in health and virtue,
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!
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O Fortuna from Orff's Carmina Burana (1937)
O Fortune,
like the moon
you are changeable,
ever waxing
and waning;
hateful life
first 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 is against me
in health
and virtue,
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!