But as we all know, sometimes the quietest people harbor the most fiery passions. During her life she was regarded as a quiet, eccentric spinster. What romances Emily Dickinson had, if any, and with whom, and with what type of person, are unknown to us. Sappho’s sexuality is much debated, and many other great poets have managed to keep their romantic lives hidden from history. Try that instead of mumbling about how you get nervous and tongue-tied in someone’s presence. I can feel that I have been changed, I feel that Shakes my body, paler I turn than grass is But here Sappho describes the overpowering effects of love on her own body: Perhaps the greatest ancient love poet was the female poet Sappho, whose work exists today only in gorgeous fragments, many of them praising women. Some lovers are traditionalists, at least when it comes to literature, so when dealing with them, it’s best to go back to the beginning. No one did that more memorably than Lord Byron, whose “She Walks in Beauty” begins with this: If you’re not quite at the kiss-requesting stage, a better move is simply to praise your lover’s beauty.

Here’s the second stanza of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Love’s Philosophy.” Has there ever been a more perfect way to request a kiss? Scholars of this literary school will tell you that the term “Romantic” refers to an intellectual style obsessed with inspiration and the sublime, rather than romantic love, but poetry devotees know the Romantics wrote some of the finest love poems in the language.

Let’s start with the great Romantic poets themselves.

Download my true love poem