If “Roses are red” seems as old as time itself, that’s because it practically is. The familiar rhyme is generally traced back to an epic poem, The Faerie Queene, written in 1590 by Edmund Spenser. In this allegorical work in praise of Elizabeth I, a man describes the sight of a fairy woman bathing: “She bath’d with roses red, and violets blew,/ And all the sweetest flowres, that in the forrest grew.”
Some 200 years later, in 1784, the concept resurfaced, this time in a nursery rhyme book, Joseph Johnson’s Gammer Gurton’s Garland. In it, a poem titled “The Valentine” read: “The rose is red, the violet’s blue,/ The honey’s sweet, and so are you.”
“Everything between those two dates, and everything since,” Marcel de Romph writes, “is people borrowing it.” And people sure didn’t hold back. Over the centuries, the familiar formula has been tweaked, adapted, parodied, and occasionally turned into something that barely resembles a love poem at all.
The acclaimed writer Victor Hugo included a version of the verse, either knowingly or unknowingly, in his now-iconic 1862 work, Les Misérables. Translated from French, Fantine sings: “We will buy very pretty things/ A-walking through the faubourgs./ Violets are blue, roses are red./ Violets are blue,/ I love my loves.”
As de Romph neatly puts it, “Hugo got the colors botanically right and lost the rhyme. English kept the rhyme and changed the flowers. You cannot really have both.”
But the rhyme didn’t stay confined to literature, either. Country singer Roger Miller parodied it in his 1964 hit “Dang Me,” while the Marx Brothers put their own spin on the format in Horse Feathers. Other versions have popped up across popular culture, including Kurt Vonnegut’s 1973 novel Breakfast of Champions, Bob Dylan’s 1989 song “Where Teardrops Fall,” and the 1991 comedy What About Bob?
Over time, countless variations and parodies appeared in songs, films, books, jokes, and, eventually, the internet. By then, “Roses are red, violets are blue” had become less a poem with a fixed form and more a template waiting to be filled in. And perhaps that’s part of the reason it’s lasted so long: once everyone knows how the rhyme begins, there’s plenty of fun to be had with where it goes next.
As Jacob Uitti writes for American Songwriter, “In more recent years, the rhyme has come to be known almost at birth, it’s in our DNA. When something romantic happens, it’s Roses are red, violets are blue. It’s as much a punchline setup as it is an admission of affection now.”
And that neatly brings us to the subreddit whose posts we’re featuring today: r/rosesarered. Because here, “Roses are red” isn’t just a well-picked name. As the rules clearly state: “It’s the soul of the sub.”
