O Fortune, like the moon you are changeable, ever waxing ever waning.

Carmina Burana is a medieval (11th-12th centuries) collection of 254 poems and texts.  Carl Orff set 24 of them to music in his Carmina Burnana cantata written in 1936 and first produced in 1937.  Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi, a poem in the original medieval collection, lamenting inexorable fate which governs all, serves as the opening and closing of the cantata.  

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The original poem in Latin

O Fortuna

velut luna

statu variabilis,

semper crescis

aut decrescis;

vita detestabilis

nunc obdurat

et tunc curat

ludo mentis aciem,

egestatem,

potestatem

dissolvit ut glaciem.

Sors immanis

et inanis,

rota tu volubilis,

status malus,

vana salus

semper dissolubilis,

obumbrata

et velata

michi quoque niteris;

nunc per ludum

dorsum nudum

fero tui sceleris.

Sors salutis

et virtutis

michi nunc contraria,

est affectus

et defectus

semper in angaria.

Hac in hora

sine mora

corde pulsum tangite;

quod per sortem

sternit fortem,

mecum omnes plangite!

And then in English.

O Fortune,

like the moon

you are changeable,

ever waxing

ever waning;

hateful life

first oppresses

and then soothes

playing with mental clarity;

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,

everyone weep with me!