THE CHAPTER 'HE FROWNED.'

(LXXX. Mecca.)

IN the name of the merciful and compassionate God.

He frowned and turned his back, for that there came to him a blind man 1!

But what should make thee know whether haply he may be purified? or may be mindful and the reminder profit him?

[5] But as for him who is wealthy, thou dost attend to him; and thou dost not care that he is not purified; but as for him who comes to thee earnestly fearing the while, [10] from him thou art diverted!

Nay! verily, it is a memorial; and whoso pleases will remember it.

In honoured pages exalted, purified, [15] in the hands of noble, righteous scribes!

May man be killed! how ungrateful he is!

Of what did He create him? Of a clot. He created him and fated him; [20] then the path He did make easy for him; then He killed him, and laid him in the tomb; then when He pleases will He raise him up again.

- 321 -

Nay, he has not fulfilled his bidding!

But let man look unto his foods. [25] Verily, we have poured the water out in torrents: then we have cleft the earth asunder, and made to grow therefrom the grain, and the grape, and the hay, and the olive, and the palm, [30], and gardens closely planted, and fruits, and grass,-a provision for you and for your cattle!

But when the stunning noise shall come, on the day when man shall flee from his brother [35] and his mother and his father and his spouse and his sons! Every man among them on that day shall have a business to employ him.

Faces on that day shall be bright,-laughing, joyous! [40] and faces shall have dust upon them,-darkness shall cover them! those are the wicked misbelievers!