Adkins, Lesley, and Roy A. Adkins. Dictionary of Roman Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Descriptions of not just Roman deities, but many Gaulish ones.
www.avesta.org Includes translations of all the Zoroastrian hymns.
Book of Common Prayer. www.eskimo.com. Although Christian, its style has sunk in to such an extent that it has become much of what we expect from prayers. The imagery is wonderful, and the prayers are good examples of how noble spoken English can be.
Boyce, Mary, ed. and trans. Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1984. Includes translations of a number of the Zoroastrian hymns, different from avesta.org, and perhaps more reliable.
Budge, E. A. Wallis. The Gods of the Egyptians (2 vols.). New York: Dover Publications, 1904. His translations are out of date, as are his commentaries, but they are all suggestive of the style of Egyptian prayers. Particularly valuable is that he gives many titles by which each deity might be called.
Carmichael, Alexander. Carmina Gadelica: Hymns and Incantations Collected in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland in the Last Century. Edinburgh: Lindisfarne Press, 1992 (1909). Originally published in four volumes in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. The original version included the Scottish Gaelic; this edition does not. Christian, but with a Pagan appreciation for nature. Many Pagans have used prayers from this, with the substitution of Pagan deities for the Christian God and saints. It has been questioned as to how much Carmichael simply recorded the prayers and how much he “improved” them.
Dangler, Michael J., ed. The Fire on Our Hearth: A Devotional of Three Cranes Grove, ADF. Columbus, Ohio: Three Cranes Grove, 2008. Rituals of a modern druidic grove. Available from www.threecranes.org.
Dumezil, George. Archaic Roman Religion (2 vols.). Translated by Philip Krapp. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996 (1966).
Eliade, Mircea. Essential Sacred Writings from Around the World. San Francisco: Harper-SanFrancisco, 1967. Contains many prayers, as well as excerpts from scriptures.
——— The Sacred and the Profane. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1959. The classic work on sacred space.
Evelyn-White, Hugh G., ed. and trans. Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1936 (1914). Besides being a major source of information on Greek mythology, the Homeric Hymns are beautiful prayers.
Fitch, Ed, and Janet Renee Fitch. Magical Rites from the Crystal Well. St. Paul: Llewellyn, 1984. Neo-Pagan rituals with some beautiful prayers.
Gantz, Jeffrey, trans. The Mabinogion. New York: Penguin Books, 1976.
Grant, Frederick C., ed. Ancient Roman Religion. New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1957. Roman texts, including prayers.
Graves, Robert. The White Goddess. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1948. Just don't believe a word it says, and you'll be all right.
Griffith, Ralph T. H. The Rig Veda. New York: Book of the Month Club, 1992. Completed in 1896, it is dated. It's easy to find, and is even available online at http://www.sacred-texts.com.
Hayakawa, S. I. Choose the Right Word: A Modern Guide to Synonyms. New York: Harper and Row, 1968.
Heiler, Friedrich. Prayer: A Study in the History and Psychology of Religion. Edited and translated by Samuel McComb. New York: Oxford University Press, 1932.
Hollander, Lee M., trans. Poetic Edda. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1962. One of our major sources of information on Norse religion. Hollander limits himself to words with Germanic roots, which makes the poems sometimes difficult to understand but still beautiful.
Jackson, Kenneth Hurlstone, ed. and trans. A Celtic Miscellany. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Classics, 1975. A collection of Celtic tales and poems.
Jamaspasa, Kaikhusroo M. Acta Iranica 24 (Papers in Honour of Professor Mary Boyce) (1985), 335–356. “On the Drōn in Zoroastrianism.”
Lady Sheba. The Book of Shadows. St. Paul: Llewellyn, 2002. A presentation of the Gardnerian Book of Shadows.
Laurie, Erynn. A Circle of Stones: Journeys and Meditations for Modern Celts. Chicago: Eschaton, 1995. A rosary using Irish texts. Purchasable as a pdf file at www.sanet.com.
Lincoln, Bruce. Death, War, and Sacrifice: Studies in Ideology and Practice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Lyle, Emily B. “Dumezil's Three Functions and Indo-European Cosmic Structure.” History of Religions, 22:1 (Aug 1982), pp. 25–44.
Macdonell, Arthur Anthony. Vedic Mythology. New York: Gordon Press, 1897 (reprinted 1974). The more important Vedic deities, short summaries of their myths, and titles.
Marcus Aurelius. Meditations. Translated by Maxwell Staniforth. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Classics, 1964.
McMahon, Gregory. The Hittite State Cult of the Tutelary Deities (Assyriological Studies) 25. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Hittite rituals and prayers.
Modi, Jivanji J. The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of the Parsees. New York: Garland Publishing, 1979 (1922). avesta.org (accessed 12/5/18).
Nelson, John K. A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996.
Nicolson, Adam. God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.
O'Flaherty, Wendy Doniger, ed. and trans. The Rig Veda. London: Penguin Books, 1981. The oldest of the Vedic prayers. This is a translation of about one tenth of the original. Good inspiration and useful as examples.
Ovid. The Metamorphoses. Translated by Horace Gregory. New York: Penguin Books, 1960.
Panikkar, Raimundo. The Vedic Experience: Mantramañjarī. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. Collection of excerpts from Vedic prayers and other texts. Available online at www.himalayanacademy.com.
Polomé, Edgar C. “Old Norse Religious Terminology in Indo-European Perspective.” In Language, Society, and Paleoculture: Essays by Edgar C. Polomé, selected and introduced by Anwar S. Dil. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1982.
Propp, V. J. Down along the River Volga: An Anthology of Russian Folk Lyrics. Edited and translated by Roberta Reeder. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975.
Rananujan, A. K., trans. Speaking of Śiva. New York: Penguin Books, 1973. Hymns to Śiva.
Redford, Donald B., ed. The Oxford Essential Guide to Egyptian Mythology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Regardie, Israel, ed. Gems from the Equinox. Newburyport, Massachusetts: Red Wheel/Weiser, 2007. Ceremonial magical rituals, with some lovely prayers.
Roberts, Elizabeth, and Elias Amidon, eds. Earth Prayers from around the World: 365 Prayers, Poems, and Invocations Honoring the Earth. San Francisco: Harper-SanFrancisco, 1991. Prayers from around the world, in a number of religious traditions, all roughly associated with what might be called “Earth Spirituality.”
Serith, Ceisiwr. Deep Ancestors: Practicing the Religion of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. Tucson, Arizona: ADF Publishing, 2009.
Staal, Frits. Agni: The Vedic Ritual of the Fire Altar (2 vols.). Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1983. A description, with photographs and interpretation, of a performance of the Vedic Agnicayana ritual.
Virgil. The Aeneid. Translated by Allan Mandelbaum. New York: Bantam Books, 1981.
Willis, Garry. Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992. Contains an analysis of the Gettysburg address that demonstrates well-elevated speech.
Watts, Alan. The Way of Zen. New York: Vintage Books, 1957.
Benveniste, Emile. Indo-European Language and Society. Translated by Elizabeth Palmer. Coral Gables, Florida: University of Miami Press, 1969. Much on Indo-European poetic structure.
Frost, Robert. The Poetry of Robert Frost: The Collected Poems, Complete and Unabridged. Edited by Edward Connery Lathem. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979. A master of American poetic style, Frost uses nature imagery as metaphors for human life, linking us to the natural world. He was a close observer of seasons.
Haiku. There are many books on haiku and related verse forms, as well as many websites.
Heaney, Seamus, trans. Beowulf: A New Verse Translation. New York: W. W. Norton, 2000. A translation of this Old English classic that keeps to the Old English alliterative scheme, but loosely enough to correspond to modern English poetic sensibilities.
Matasović, Ranko. A Theory of Textual Reconstruction in Indo-European Linguistics. New York: Peter Lang, 1996. Indo-European (primarily Vedic and Greek) poetic metaphors and structures.
Shakespeare, William. Naturally. He demonstrates the thin line between prose and poetry.
Sturluson, Snorri. Edda. Norse poetic theory, including kennings.
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009 A modern version of a medieval Germanic tale, told in the alliterative style. Good discussion of Germanic poetic style.
Watkins, Calvert. How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. An analysis of Indo-European poetry, especially meters. Most of the texts are prayers from ancient cultures. Very technical.
West, M. L. Indo-European Poetry and Myth. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Deals with the form and imagery of Indo-European poetry, as well as basic religion. Many excerpts from prayers and hymns. Technical, but not as technical as Watkins.
Whitman, Walt. The Complete Poems. One of the prime inventors of American poetic style. The tendency of his poems to dissolve into lists is actually a good model for prayers.
Yeats, W. B. The Poems: The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats. Edited by Richard J. Finneran. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. The most famous poet of the Celtic Revival, Yeats nevertheless wrote in English. This gives us a feel for how Irish rhythms and imagery can be adopted by English writers.