What kind of love poems are you in the mood for? Throughout literary history, love poems have connected lonely hearts, transcended cultural barriers and ultimately withstood the test of time.

First published in the TLS in 1979 – and appearing in the collection Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis in 1986 – Wendy Cope’s bitterly funny tilt at modern love, “Lonely Hearts”, was one of her first ...