Valentines Day … Roses are Red

Any excuse to eat cake.

The verse "Roses are Red” echoes conventions traceable as far back as Edmund Spenser’s epic “The Faerie Queene” (1590):

"She bath'd with roses red, and violets blew,
And all the sweetest flowres, that in the forrest grew."

The modern cliché Valentine's Day poem can be found in Gammer Gurton’s Garland (1784), a collection of English nursery rhymes published in London by Joseph Johnson:

"The rose is red, the violet's blue,
The honey's sweet, and so are you.
Thou art my love and I am thine;
I drew thee to my Valentine:
The lot was cast and then I drew,
And Fortune said it shou'd be you."

I hope you having a nice day, irrespective of whether or not, roses are involved.