Sol 6.1

  1. Provision is apportioned among God's creatures.

    And creatures are of two kinds: provided for and deprived.

  2. Do not exhaust yourself in seeking sustenance.

    How far apart are one free of the world and one burdened with worry.

  3. And sometimes a sparrow is granted a gift

    on which it lives, while the aged vultures are deprived.

  4. And man, in the circumstances of both abodes, is subject to judgment.

    And all the Most Merciful decrees is inevitable.

  5. And we are but travelers in this world,

    and it is a desert path to the gathering.

  6. We have lived gathering what will finally be scattered,

    within it, and building what will finally be demolished.

  7. And each of us is absorbed in desire for his worldly life;

    in it, there are setbacks and advances for him.

  8. And we are unaware of swift, dreadful death, and the man of

    lowly fortune is constrained among the heedless.

  9. Our hopes are youthful, while gray hair wastes us away.

    They are beardless youths, while our bodies are decrepit.

  10. We hope for lasting life, yet the lasting life available to us,

    when we reflect, is truly nonexistent.

  11. In those who went before lies a warning for our hopes:

    the seven regions bowed to their rule.

  12. Their share of it was nothing but grave-pits,

    and all were surrendered to time's revolving course.

  13. Ruin upon an abode that does not retain its prosperity,

    where neither oppressor nor oppressed remains.

  14. Its rich man is troubled as long as he stays in it;

    its poor man is grief-stricken by the bitterness of living.

  15. Leave it: it never laughs without weeping; and whenever

    it draws close, it turns cold, and its bounty is blameworthy in his eyes.

Sol 6.1