ROSES wilt, chocolates melt, balloons burst, lingerie frays, and champagne goes flat so on this, the most romantic of days, what's a real romantic to do to prove that love can last?

Words, that's what. Words - just like your love, of course - will last for ever. Whatever you want to say, someone will have said it before, only better. There are poems for all occasions - from that dizzy excitement of first love, to that sad realisation that it's all over.

As many of the finest love poems are still going strong after more than two and a half thousand years, then clearly not much about love and romance has changed in all that time.

So if you've left it to the very last moment, dash along to your local bookshop, now . Not only is a book of love poetry a wonderfully romantic present in itself - but think how you can recreate those magic moments by reading aloud from them.

And to tell you which to choose, we've been wallowing in romance, pining, yearning, celebrating...

101 POEMS TO HELP YOU UNDERSTAND MEN (AND WOMEN) edited by Daisy Goodwin (HarperCollins £9.99)

This is a delicious concoction of poems, arranged under lots of headings for all occasions, from The Rules of Engagement, through Bloody Men, Men Have Feelings Too, Just say Yes and Missing You.

Most are 20th century, but Andrew Marvell's here (Had we but world enough and time, this coyness lady were no crime.." ) and Martial and Herrick, plus some Yeats, Macneice, Larkin, but there's lots of Wendy Cope, Fleur Adcock and Maya Angelou.

This is a collection for people who need instant, easily understood emotion - many of the poems are short, snappy, but spot on.

Like a good champagne - light and sparkling, but with enough dryness to give it real bite.

THE FABER BOOK OF LOVE POEMS edited by Geoffrey Grigson (£9.99)

Four hundred poems, many of them long, some of them in French, few of them 20th century. Herrick is here, of course, Marvel, Yeats, a lot of Shakespeare, Wyatt, John Clare and Walter Savage Landor.

Although arranged in sections, "Love Expected," "Love Begun", etc, this is probably for scholars only.. Too many classical references for the rest of us.

This collection has some wonderful poems but, like the sixpence in the Christmas pudding, they're not always easy to find...

ONE HUNDRED FAVOURITE LOVE POEMS (WH Smith £4.99)

A small pink volume illustrated with charming old black and white photos. This has the widest range of poems - from Catullus and Ovid, through Shelley and Shakespeare to John Betjeman, Fleur Adcock, Roger McGough and Wendy Cope - "The day he moved out was terrible, that evening she went through hell. His absence wasn't a problem, but the corkscrew had gone as well."

Ah yes, how well she expresses the sorrow of parting.

A bit of a pick and mix selection here and arranged in no apparent order. But probably something for everyone, whatever age, in love or out.

LOVE PLEASE! ONE HUNDRED PASSIONATE POEMS (Phoenix £7.99)

A small volume with a pretentious introduction and irritating illustrations. Also the editors have been lazy and merely printed the poems in alphabetical order.

But there's a nice range of poems, including some e.e.cummings, Betjeman Housman, and Philip Larkin's Annus Mirabilis "Sexual intercourse began, in nineteen sixty three (Which was rather late for me) Between the end of the Chatterley ban, and the Beatles' first LP."

Poor Larkin, don't think things ever got much better.

CLASSIC FM CLASSIC ROMANCE (Hodder and Stoughton £9.99)

Not just poems here, but extracts of prose too, plus readers' sentimental stories as sent into Classic FM when they're choosing romantic requests. All terribly poignant and naff and utterly compulsive. As well as all the usual suspects - Keats, Cope, Shakespeare, John Donne, Roger McGough - the prose pieces make a refreshing change as they so rarely appear in any anthology.

But here you can read a chunk of Noel Coward's Brief Encounter, a letter from Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barratt, bits of The Importance Of Being Earnest, Doctor Zhivago, Lady Chatterly's Lover and love letters such as from John Keats to Fanny Brawne or Mozart to his wife Constanz.

It's a good mix and if you can't read those true life love stories today, then when can you?

So we've chosen the books that set the mood - the rest is up to you.