MECCA.–25 Verses

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

WHEN the Heaven shall have SPLIT ASUNDER

And duteously obeyed its Lord;1

And when Earth shall have been stretched out as a plain,

And shall have cast forth what was in her and become empty,

And duteously obeyed its Lord;

Then verily, O man, who desirest to reach thy Lord, shalt thou meet him.

And he into whose right hand his Book shall be given,

Shall be reckoned with in an easy reckoning,

And shall turn, rejoicing, to his kindred.

But he whose Book shall be given him behind his back2

Shall invoke destruction:

But in the fire shall he burn,

For that he lived joyously among his kindred,

Without a thought that he should return to God.

Yea, but his Lord beheld him.

It needs not therefore that I swear by the sunset redness,

And by the night and its gatherings,

And by the moon when at her full,

That from state to state shall ye be surely carried onward.3

What then hath come to them that they believe not?

And that when the Koran is recited to them they adore not?

Yea, the unbelievers treat it as a lie.

But God knoweth their secret hatreds:

Let their only tidings4 be those of painful punishment;

Save to those who believe and do the things that be right. An unfailing recompense shall be theirs.

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1 Lit. and obeyed its Lord, and shall be worthy, or capable, i.e., of obedience.

2 That is, into his left hand. The Muhammadans believe that the right hand of the damned will be chained to the neck; the left chained behind the back.

3 From Life to Death, from the Grave to Resurrection, thence to Paradise.

4 The expression is ironical. See Freyt. on the word. Lit. tell them glad tidings.