The harp is a stringed musical instrument. Harps have been known since antiquity in Asia, Africa and Europe, dating back at least as early as 3500 BCE.

Quotes

• I lay my harp on the curved table,
  Sitting there idly, filled only with emotions.
  Why should I trouble to play?
  A breeze will come and sweep the strings.
  • Bai Juyi, "The Harp", in The White Pony: An Anthology Of Chinese Poetry (1949), ed. Robert Payne, p. 220

• In Paradise they no more look awry;
  and though they make anew, they make no lie.
  Be sure they still will make, not being dead,
  and poets shall have flames upon their head,
  and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall:
  there each shall choose for ever from the All.
  • J. R. R. Tolkien, in Mythopoeia (1931)

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Harp on Wikipedia