None shall treat that sudden coming as a lie:
Day that shall abase! Day that shall exalt!
When the earth shall be shaken with a shock,
And the mountains shall be crumbled with a crumbling,
And shall become scattered dust,
And into three bands shall ye be divided:2
Then the people of the right hand3-Oh! how happy shall be the people of the right hand!
And the people of the left hand-Oh! how wretched shall be the people of the left hand!
And they who were foremost on earth-the foremost still.4
These are they who shall be brought nigh to G.o.d,
In gardens of delight;
A crowd of the former
And few of the latter generations;
On inwrought couches
Reclining on them face to face:
Aye-blooming youths go round about to them
With goblets and ewers and a cup of flowing wine;
Their brows ache not from it, nor fails the sense:
And with such fruits as shall please them best,
And with flesh of such birds, as they shall long for:
And theirs shall be the Houris, with large dark eyes, like pearls hidden in their sh.e.l.ls,
In recompense of their labours past.
No vain discourse shall they hear therein, nor charge of sin,
But only the cry, "Peace! Peace!"
And the people of the right hand-oh! how happy shall be the people of the right hand!
Amid thornless sidrahs5
And talh6 trees clad with fruit,
And in extended shade,
And by flowing waters,
And with abundant fruits,7
Unfailing, unforbidden,
And on lofty couches.
Of a rare creation have we created the Houris,
And we have made them ever virgins,
Dear to their spouses, of equal age with them,8
For the people of the right hand,
A crowd of the former,
And a crowd of the latter generations.9
But the people of the left hand-oh! how wretched shall be the people of the left hand!
Amid pestilential10 winds and in scalding water,
And in the shadow of a black smoke,
Not cool, and horrid to behold.11
For they truly, ere this, were blessed with worldly goods,
But persisted in heinous sin,
And were wont to say,
"What! after we have died, and become dust and bones, shall we be raised?
And our fathers, the men of yore?"
SAY: Aye, the former and the latter:
Gathered shall they all be for the time of a known day.
Then ye, O ye the erring, the gainsaying,