To the dying fall
of the temple bell, add the
sound of my own voice,
and carry word to her that
my life in the world is done

Meaning

To the dying fall of the temple bell add the sound of my own weeping, and carry word to her that my life in the world is done.

Commentary

Part Three: Ukifune

　This is the last poem Ukifune left, and in effect her death poem. On a night after the twentieth of the Third Month, listening to the bell that came across from the mountain temple at Uji, she asks that word of the end of her life be carried to her mother. The next morning she was gone from the villa, and the household was thrown into an uproar. The tale passes to the Kagero chapter, where the grief of those left behind is drawn, and Kaoru and Niou go on without knowing the truth.

　The bell is the temple bell at dawn, sounded in poetry as the voice of impermanence. In oto o soete, oto is her own weeping, laid over the sound of the bell. Waga yo tsukinu is that her life is at an end. Kimi is her mother. Cast as a message to be carried, the farewell she cannot speak herself is put into the bell's dying sound, and the poem is the best known in the whole Uji sequence.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

To the dying fall of the temple bell, add the sound of my own voice, and carry word to her that my life in the world is done

To the dying fall
of the temple bell, add the
sound of my own voice,
and carry word to her that
my life in the world is done