Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue

  The origin of the famous Valentine's Day poem:

We have all heard of the most famous poem of all that starts with ”Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue”.
 
The most cliched Valentine's Day greeting didn't start out as a cliche, of course.
Roses are red
Violets are blue,
Sugar is sweet
And so are you.

The poem was made famous in 1784 by Gammer Gurton’s ‘Garland’:

The rose is red, the violet’s blue,
The honey’s sweet, and so are you.
Thou are 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.

 

That rhyme, though, was built on poetic conventions that are traceable back to Edmund Spenser's epic The Faerie Queene of 1590:

It was upon a Sommers shynie day,
When Titan faire his beames did display,


In a fresh fountaine, farre from all mens vew,


                      She bath'd her brest, the boyling heat t'allay;

                        She bath'd with roses red, and violets blue,

                  And all the sweetest flowres, that in the forrest grew.

 

And the sweetest Hamas Valentine Wish

Little Thelma comes home from first grade, and tells her father that they learned about the history of Valentine's Day.
"Since Valentine's Day is for a Christian saint and we're Jewish," she asks, "Will God get mad at me for giving someone a valentine?
Thelma's father thinks a bit then says "No, I don't think God would get mad.
Who do you want to give a valentine to?”
"The whole Hamas group," she says.
"Why them," her father asks in shock?
"Well," she says, "I thought that if a little American Jewish girl could have enough love to give them a valentine, they might start to think that maybe we're not all bad, and maybe start loving people a little bit. And if other kids saw what I did and then they sent valentines to them, they'd love everyone a lot. And then they'd start going all over the place telling everyone how much they loved them and how they didn't hate anyone anymore.”
Her father's heart swells and he looks at his daughter with new found pride.
"Thelma, that's the most wonderful thing I've ever heard.”
"I know," Thelma says, "and once that gets them out in the open, the IDF could blow the shit out of them."