A small sampling of the many, many things I've copied out over the years. These three almost go together, but I didn't copy them out at the same time.

Prayer (I)

George Herbert

Prayer the Churches banquet, Angels age,

Gods breath in man returning to his birth,

The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,

The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth;

Engine against th’ Almightie, sinners towre,

Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,

The six-daies world-transposing in an houre,

A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear;

Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,

Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,

Heaven in ordinarie, Man well drest,

The milkie way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bels beyond the starres heard, the souls bloud,

The land of spices; something understood.

“The Strange Elizabethans,” from The Second Common Reader

Virginia Woolf

And if, in their hopes for the future and their sensitiveness to the opinion of older civilisations, the Elizabethans show much the same susceptibility that sometimes puzzles us among the younger countries today, the sense that broods over them of what is about to happen, of an undiscovered land on which they are about to set foot, is much like the excitement that science stirs in the minds of imaginative English writers of our own time. Yet . . . it has to be admitted that to read [Gabriel] Harvey’s pages methodically is almost beyond the limits of human patience. The words seem to run redhot, molten, hither and thither, until we cry out in anguish for the boon of some meaning to sent its stamp on them. He takes the same idea and repeats it over and over again:

In the sovereign workmanship of Nature herself, what garden of flowers without weeds? what orchard of trees without worms? what field of corn without cockle? what pond of fishes without frogs? what sky of light without darkness? what mirror of knowledge without ignorance? what man of earth without frailty? what commodity of the world without discommodity?

It is interminable. As we go round and round like a horse in a mill, we perceive that we are thus clogged with sound because we are reading what we should be hearing. The amplifications and the repetitions, the emphasis like that of a fist pounding the edge of a pulpit, are for the benefit of the slow and sensual ear which loves to dally over sense and luxuriate in sound—the ear which brings in, along with the spoken word, the look of the speaker and his gestures, which gives a dramatic value to what he says and adds to the crest of an extravagance some modulation which makes the word wing its way to the precise spot aimed at in the hearer’s heart.

Lord Randall

Anonymous (earliest printed date 1787, but no doubt much older)

“O where hae ye been, Lord Randal, my son?

O where hae ye been, my handsome young man?”

“I hae been to the wild wood; mother, make my bed soon,

For I’m weary wi’ hunting, and fain wald lie down.”

“Where gat ye your dinner, Lord Randal, my son?

Where gat ye your dinner, my handsome young man?”

“I din’d wi’ my true-love; mother, make my bed soon,

For I’m weary wi’ hunting, and fain wald lie down.”

“What gat ye to your dinner, Lord Randal, my son?

What gat ye to your dinner, my handsome young man?”

“I gat eels boil’d in broo; mother, make my bed soon,

For I’m weary wi’ hunting, and fain wald lie down.”

“What became of your bloodhounds, Lord Randal, my son?”

What became of your bloodhounds, my handsome young man?”

“O they swell’d and they died; mother, make my bed soon,

For I’m weary wi’ hunting, and fain wald like down.”

“O I fear ye are poison’d, Lord Randal, my son!

I fear ye are poison’d, my handsome young man!”

“O yes! I am poison’d; mother, make my bed soon,

For I’m sick at the heart, and I fain wald lie down.”