Roses are Red...

Most are familiar with the couplet one finds on many Valentine's Day cards.

Roses are red, Violets are Blue

Roses are red, and my love is true

(alternate second line):

Sugar is sweet, and so are you

Victor Hugo, in his novel, Les Miserables, (1860) includes several poems/songs. An excerpt from one follows:

Translated from the original French by C.E. Wilbur, and published within the same year as the original French, this translation is in the public domain

Sung by Fantine while in the infirmary. Heard by Sister Simplice:

We will buy very pretty things

A walking through the faubourgs.

Violets are blue, roses are red,

Violets are blue, I love my loves.

A poet as well as an author, Hugo wrote the songs that appear in his novels. There is no reason not to believe all the words are his own creation. Though authors do on occasion borrow lines from elsewhere, and adapt them to their own use.

It is possible this happened here, and Hugo may have borrowed from Spenser's Faerie Queen. Book Three, Canto 6, Stanza 6:

But wondrously they were begot, and bred

Through influence of th'heauens fruitfull ray,

As it in antique bookes is mentioned.

It was vpon 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 blew,

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

Spenser wrote The Faerie Queen, based on the Arthurian legends, a few centuries before Hugo (1590). While there is a long distance between Spenser's words and the Valentine's Day cliche, It is quite possible Hugo was the bridge. It is equally possible Hugo wasn't basing his on Spenser at all.

Some might wonder how the words found its way into English from Hugo's French. There is a possible explanation. Les Miserables was published in 1860, in both French and English. During the US Civil War (1860-1865), it was standard issue to all Confederate Soldiers. They are said to have called themselves, "Lee's Miserables," making reference to their leader General Robert E Lee.
¹