ah, i remembered the first line correctly, and here it is.

There is comfort in the knowledge
you are of your kind and species,
that your name be not forgotten
when your flesh has joined your forebears
and returned to earth, and rotted,
in your time and in your season.

You will die, not like the sparrow,
unregarded, unconsidered,
in the dark beyond the chamber
people's names are known, remembered
if they dare to live while living.

Your wide actions build tomorrow,
which your children see without you.
Every deed that's well accomplished
lives beyond you, and each sapling,
that you plant and tend and care for
casts its shade into that future
that you neither fear, nor enter.

All will die, decay and perish
and the world will perish with it.
In the scale of rocks and oceans
you are living in an eyeblink.
In the scale of stars and planets
life itself too fast to measure
flickering green upon the surface.
All the gods and stars will flame out,
entropy alone will triumph
in cold victory-feasts of stillness.

This is comfort: face it bravely.

Your significance, your measure,
is the scale of your perspective
on the way you live while living.
That you are a fleeting dust mote
is a truth you can encompass
And go on, each breath accomplished
in the joy of human living
till we die, in each breath choosing
life, and time for love, and caring,
though all falls to rot around us.

Unimportant, and a hero,
both together, faring forward,
free of fate, in choice, becoming
what you will, your destination.

by jo walton.