Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi via Red Mars

"We say a bedtime prayer from the Persian poet Rumi Jalaluddin,” the old woman told him, and recited it:

I died as mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal.
I died as animal and I was human.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die human,
To soar with angels blessed above.
And when I sacrifice my angel soul,
I shall become what no mind ever conceived.

“Sleep well,” she said into his drowsing mind. “This is all our path.”

                        - Kim Stanley Robinson (Red Mars)