Renaissance poets were especially fond of expressing love in sonnets, most notably Shakespeare, who famously compared his love to a rose, a summer's day, perfume, snow, and various species of birds. Romantic era love poems have become some of the most enduring, and oft-repeated, poems ever written in English. Consider this Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem, the first line of which has become so well-known as to be considered the classic love poem cliché:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

How better to express one’s feelings of love and passion than through reading and sharing a poem? Countless suitors have used verse to woo a love interest, expressing feelings of desire and longing. "Many love poems are actually poems of seduction," writes Marilyn Hacker in the Poets.org exhibit "Eros and the Lyric Imagination: Poems of Love." There are numerous anthologies devoted to love poems, and thousands of websites.

Here is a very small sample of both new and classic love poems:

"Credo" by Matthew Rohrer
"How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"I Love You" by Sara Teasdale
"It Was Raining In Delft" by Peter Gizzi
"It's all I have to bring today (26)" by Emily Dickinson
"My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun (Sonnet 130)" by William Shakespeare
"Epithalamium" by Matthew Rohrer
"somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond" by E. E. Cummings
"Song to Celia" by Ben Jonson
"Sonnets on Love XIII" by Jean de Sponde
"To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell
"True Love" by Robert Penn Warren
"Two Loves" by Lord Alfred Douglas
"When a Woman Loves a Man" by David Lehman
"Love in a Life" by Robert Browning
"Love" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"She Walks in Beauty" by George Gordon, Lord Byron
"The Buried Life" by Matthew Arnold
"The Look" by Sara Teasdale
"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" by Christopher Marlowe
"When You are Old" by W. B. Yeats
"Wild Nights – Wild Nights! (249)" by Emily Dickinson
"Instead of a Love Poem" by Yehuda Amichai
"I loved you first..." (from Monna Innominata) by Christina Rossetti
"I wish I could remember..." (from Monna Innominata) by Christina Rossetti
"I dream of you, to wake..." (from Monna Innominata) by Christina Rossetti
"Some Trees" by John Ashbery
"Lullaby" by W.H. Auden
"It Was Raining in Delft" by Peter Gizzi
"In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden" by Matthea Harvey
"I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair" by Pablo Neruda
"Morning" by Frank O'Hara
"The Hug" by Thom Gunn
"Love Song" by Rainer Maria Rilke
"He is more than a hero" by Sappho
"On the Road Home" by Wallace Stevens
"A Birthday" by Christina Rossetti
"Meeting at Night" by Robert Browning
"A Negro Love Song" by Paul Laurence Dunbar
"To Anthea Who May Command Him Any Thing" by Robert Herrick
"Wooing Song" by Giles Fletcher
"A Ditty" by Sir Philip Sidney
"A Line-storm Song" by Robert Frost
"In a Boat" by D. H. Lawrence
"The Definition of Love" by Andrew Marvell