As many as the hedgehog’s quills must be the weapons that protect me everywhere against capricious fortune and stem the wounding hand’s assault on virtue. Each hour and moment I must face this foe that bristles like the hedgehog with its pricks and tricks. For virtue’s sake I must defiantly confront all fortune’s change and mutability. While it plagues me, it chokes on its own pleasure. For only a short while I must contend with fortune, then I will triumph; defeated, it will follow me in chains. If now, for virtue’s sake, I am despised and taunted, I pay no heed, if only I may do my work. If God is pleased, my pain will be repaid a thousandfold, whether on earth or at his throne of bliss. Click here to read this sonnet in the original German.