Any old iron, any old iron, Anyany old old iron? You look neat Talk about a treat, You look dapper from your napper to your feet. Dressed in style, brand new tile, And your father's old green tie on, But I wouldn't give you tuppence for your old watch chain; Old iron, old iron?

-Collins, Charles
  'Any Old Iron' (with E  A Sheppard and Fred Terry). The second line is commonly rendered'Any any any old iron?'.

'Youarefettered,'said Scrooge, trembling.'Tell mewhy?' 'I wear the chain I forged in life,'replied the Ghost.'I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.'

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
  A Christmas Carol, stave1.

In sculpture, did ever anybody call the Apollo a fancy piece? Or say of the Laocoo«  n how it might be made different? A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.

-Emerson, RalphWaldo
the 1841  'Thoughts on  Art', in The Dial, vol.1, no.3,  Jan.

Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see, My heart untravelled fondly turns to thee; Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain, And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.

-Goldsmith, Oliver
  The Traveller, l.7^10.

Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as 'chain'or 'train'do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance.It is nothing jointed; it flows. A'river'or a 'stream'are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life.

-James,William
  The Principles of Psychology, ch.9. This is the coining of the phrase'stream of consciousness', later applied to the narrative technique used by Joyce and others.

And fast by hanging in a golden chain This pendent world.

-Milton,John
  Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.2, l.1051^2.

There can be no danger in sweetness and youth Where love is secured by good nature and truth, On her beauty I'll gaze, and of pleasure complain, While every kind look adds a link to my chain.

-Rochester,JohnWilmot, 2nd Earl of
'The Submission', l.13^16 (published1680).

'A chain of gold ye sall not lack, Nor braid to bind your hair; Nor mettled hound, nor managed hawk, Nor palfrey fresh and fair.'

-Scott, Sir Walter
  'Jock of Hazeldean', stanza 3.

But who can turn the stream of destiny, Or break the chain of strong necessity?

-Spenser, Edmund
  Night argues against the necessity of faith. The Faerie Queen, bk.1, canto 5, stanza 25.