Examples:
"Not only must he fight with and slay this golden-winged, iron-scaled, long-tusked, brazen-clawed, snaky-haired monster, but he must do it with his eyes shut..."--Nathaniel Hawthorne, "A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys"
"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?"--Lewis Carroll, "Jabberwocky." Notice that "hast," "thou," and "slain" are all archaic--he is being intentionally archaic, to give his poem an epic sound.
Here's a good example. In the traditional English translation of the Bible, the "King James Version" of 1611, we read that "with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men." In a popular modern translation, the New International Version, written in clear modern English, the same sentence is translated "With a donkey's jawbone I have killed a thousand men."