There are songs about love, movies about love, paintings made in honor of love. But no art form captures the joy and the longing, the pain and the disappointment of love better than poetry. Since its founding in 1857, The Atlantic has published several poems about romance, marriage, and desire. Here is a selection of 11 highlights from the archive. We've featured the opening lines of each poem, and you can click through to read the entire work:

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