A poem from my high school days:

My father he was a moonshine man
A regular sort of feller
He kept Ma plastered for forty years
With the still he kept in the cellar.

I remember the folks who sampled his stuff
The glassy looks on their faces
One day our spaniel inhaled the fumes
And dropped dead at twenty paces.

Us boys we got in the moonshine game
And gave the business new birth.
The oldest is now at Alcatraz
The youngest at Leavenworth.

But they never caught my father though,
And they no longer raid his place,
Cuz the revenooers now buy his stuff
For use at a missile base.

(From an old issue of "Mad Magazine".)

But we were also required to memorize serious poetry and lines from drama:

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow..."
"I go and it is done, the bell invites me...."
"Rhodora! If the sages ask thee why..."
"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...."
"So live that when thy summons comes to join...."
"What a piece of work is Man! So noble in reason..."
"Whanne that Aprille with its shoures soute..."
"If I should die think only this of me...."
"When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes...."

And even in grade school:

"Captain! Oh my Captain! Our fearful trip is done...."
"Up from the meadows rich with corn...."
"The shades of night were falling fast...."

including something about "my little broom" which a classmate and I performed on a local television show when I was in the second grade.

Memory is like any other muscle. The more you exercise it the stronger it gets. My nephews and nieces, who have not had to memorize, are amazed at what my brother and I can recite and sing.

Because I think that song and poetry feed each other, and when you appreciate one you can appreciate the other. I can even now, in my dotage, dredge up and sing (usually completely) songs I haven't even thought about in twenty or thirty years.

Of course, I don't remember where I put my keys, glasses or cell phone....