Roses Are Red
Love poem and children's rhyme
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Roses Are Red" is a love poem and children's rhyme with Roud Folk Song Index number 19798.[1] It has spawned multiple humorous and parodic variants.[2]
| "Roses Are Red" | |
|---|---|
William Wallace Denslow's illustrations for "The rose is red", from a 1901 edition of Mother Goose | |
| Nursery rhyme |
A modern standard version is:[3]
Roses are red
Violets are blue,
Sugar is sweet
And so are you.
Origins
The rhyme builds on poetic conventions that are traceable as far back as Edmund Spenser's epic The Faerie Queene of 1590:
A rhyme similar to the modern standard version can be found in Gammer Gurton's Garland, a 1784 collection of English nursery rhymes published in London by Joseph Johnson:[5]