Would I had phrases that are not known

Once upon a time, perusing a book about the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, I noted that some twelve centuries before Homer, in about 2000 B.C.E., the scribe Khakheperresenb was already voicing what I like to call Khakheperresenb’s Complaint: “Would I had phrases that are not known,” the scribe laments, “in new language that has not been used not an utterance which has grown stale, which men of old have spoken.”

Do I Repeat Myself?
By John Barth
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/08/do-i-repeat-myself/8572/