They do not know through the blood of what witchlike women
the instrument passed unwillingly into their hands
but in it is mist ever clearing and women that keen
among scattered nets at the wet gray edge of the sands.

They cannot guess how the wild harp of Wales came to them,
this ancient of shells in the troubled cleft of their hands,
but schooling was not necessary to master its touch
and the moving of light spells through its transparent strands.

Early they learned of it, often before they were grown,
and forebodings, their own and older, could draw from its strings
the moan of those witchlike women who fashioned in Wales
a harp made for keening the deaths of the wild gray kings.

Immutable is the shell, but not the touch,
and possibly now it has an accustomed ring
and the wonder dispelled a degree, but still for a time
it is sorrow not only their own that compels them to sing.

And still for a time they will stay with a sorrow to sing,
with instinct of rules too deep in their blood to forget,
for the wild harp of Wales is enduring among them and cries,
O stay for a time, Thou Stranger, turn not away yet!