Quran — Page 578

NAY, but [most of] you love this fleeting life,

and give no thought to the life to come [and to Judgment Day]!

Some faces will on that Day be bright with happiness,

looking up to their Sustainer;

and some faces will on that Day be overcast with despair,

knowing that a crushing calamity is about to befall them.

NAY, but when [the last breath] comes up to the throat [of a dying man],

and people ask, "Is there any wizard [that could save him]?"

the while he [himself] knows that this is the parting,

and is enwrapped in the pangs of death

at that time towards thy Sustainer does he feel impelled to turn!

[Useless, though, will be his repentance: for [as long as he was alive] he did not accept the truth, nor did he pray [for enlightenment],

but, on the contrary, he gave the lie to the truth and turned away [from it],

and then went arrogantly back to what he had come from.

[And yet, O man, thine end comes hourly] nearer unto thee, and nearer –

and ever nearer unto thee, and nearer!

DOES MAN, then, think that he is to be left to himself to go about at will?

Was he not once a [mere] drop of sperm that had been spilt,

and thereafter became a germ-cell - whereupon He created and formed [it] in accordance with what [it] was meant to be,

and fashioned out of it the two sexes, the male and the female?

Is not He, then; able to bring the dead back to life?

HAS THERE [not] been an endless span of time before man [appeared - a time] when he was not yet a thing to be thought of?

Verily, it is We who have created man out of a drop of sperm intermingled, so that We might try him [in his later life]: and therefore We made him a being endowed with hearing and sight.

Verily, We have shown him the way: [and it rests with him to prove himself] either grateful or ungrateful.

[Now,] behold, for those who deny the truth We have readied chains and shackles, and a blazing flame

[whereas,] behold, the truly virtuous shall drink from a cup flavoured with the calyx of sweet-smelling flowers: