My own memory is not too good and I can’t say I’ve memorized a long one.
In 8th grade, I memorized The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert W. Service, and recieved 8 extra credit A’s in my Literature class for doing so.
Quite a funny poem, I thought.
This from S. T. Coleridge (1772-1834)
Kubla Khan
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round.
Magnificent.
There is more, of course, but while I was in the process of memorising the rest of the lines, I was interrupted by a chap who said he was from Porlock.
There’s a good chance someone will happen along here and post this memorable couplet:
This thread of yours, with all propriety
Is better served in Cafe Society.
Lewis Carrol’s The Jabberwocky
I’ve memorized a couple of longish ones:
-
Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”;
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the first part of the prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (ending with “that them hath holpen when that they were sick”);
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and, of course, Adams’ “Schrödinger, Erwin! Professor of physics!”
I’ve memorized three Lewis Carroll poems, Father William, The Walrus and The Carpenter and The Jabberwocky. I can still quote extensively from any one of them but I no longer know them in their entirety.
I memorized The Pied-Piper of Hamlin in Junior High School and have forgotten most of it.
The only long poem I can still recite with ease is The Perfect High or The Quest of Gimmesome Roy by Shel Silverstein, which goes to show that anything undertaken under the influence of drugs has a profound and lasting influence.
Ok, it doesn’t but I think it’s funny that the one long poem I remember was memorized in one night while I was tripping.
Me, too.
I always figured a mome rath looked like a cross between a mushroom and a wombat.
Slithy toves are like agave cactus with mucous.
Borogroves are like squat, leafy, badgers with party hats.
Manxome means gnarlily icky.
Galumphing is was Sally Struthers does when leaving Old Country Buffet.
was = what
Daffodils by Wordsworth and Jabberwocky by Carroll (not much interested in checking line counts to see which is actually the longest).
“There once was a man from Nantucket…”
Choose Somthing Like a Star by Robert Frost and the “Gabriel Knight 1 Exposition Poem” are the longest that I can just rattle off.
Another Jabberwockey checking in. I mostly did it to bond with my mom, she’s got just about every Lewis Carrol poem ever memorized. I think it’s all still up there…
There once was a fellow from Tripoli
Who liked to make love rather nippily.
Complained one young lass,
While rubbing her ass,
“Less teethily, please, and more lippily!”
Peace,
TN*hippily
Tenth grade English class asssignment, grading based on number of lines memorized. I chose one from Don Marquis’ “Archy and Mehitabel” that started out:
the patagonian
penguin
is a
most
peculiar
bird
…
It wasn’t a very interesting poem. But I think it was at least 100 “lines” and my English teacher conceded.
=Sue
“The Walrus and the Carpenter”
I used to memorize poems on long drives (you only have to look down at it every now and then 
The longest was Dylan Thomas’ Fern Hill, which is probably my all time favorite.
Just found out I can’t go straight through it anymore…
Shortest poem?
We dance around in a ring and suppose
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows
R.Frost
(any errors, mine)
I also memorized “The Cremation of Sam McGee” By Robert Service.
“There are strange things done in the midnight sun…”
Oh yes, when I was 9 I memorized How The Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss. I was playing the part of the Grinch for our Girl Scout play and it was just easier to memorize the whole book than try to remember only my part. I’m not sure if that counts as a “poem” but it was pretty long.
I didn’t memorize all of The Cremation of Sam McGee but it was one of my favourites. Spooky but funny. 
dunne u. wurrie, I see you have been talking to Mr. Garibaldi again!