Not the most ambitious all-time feat of memorization, but:
My lizard, my lively writher,
May your limbs never wither,
May the eyes in your face
Survive the green ice
Of envy’s mean gaze;
May you live out your life
Without hate, without grief,
And your hair ever blaze,
In the sun, in the sun,
When I am undone,
When I am no one.
It’s Theodore Roethke, published in 1964, and I had to look up the punctuation and the title: “Wish for a Young Wife.”
Meanwhile, such bloggers as Maud Newton, Carrie at Tingle Alley, and Will Baude at Crescat Sententia have spun off on a variety of tangents from my original post about the joys of memorizing poetry. Each of these folks takes the topic in their own new direction, with fascinating results all around. It’s all very bloggy and good.