section_path: Connection with romantic love/Valentine poetry
section_name: Valentine poetry
paragraph_text: Valentine poetry
  
  The earliest surviving valentine is a 15th-century rondeau written by Charles, Duke of Orléans to his wife, which commences.
  
  " Je suis desja d'amour tanné Ma tres doulce Valentinée... "
  
  At the time, the duke was being held in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt, 1415.
  
  The earliest surviving valentines in English appear to be those in the Paston Letters, written in 1477 by Margery Brews to her future husband John Paston "my right well-beloved Valentine".
  
  Saint Valentine's Day is mentioned ruefully by Ophelia in William Shakespeare 's Hamlet (1600–1601):
  
  "To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day, All in the morning betime, And I a maid at your window, To be your Valentine. Then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes, And dupp'd the chamber-door; Let in the maid, that out a maid Never departed more."
  
  John Donne used the legend of the marriage of the birds as the starting point for his epithalamion celebrating the marriage of Elizabeth, daughter of James I of England, and Frederick V, Elector Palatine, on Valentine's Day:
  
  "Hayle Bishop Valentine whose day this is
  
  All the Ayre is thy Diocese And all the chirping Queristers And other birds ar thy parishioners Thou marryest every yeare The Lyrick Lark, and the graue whispering Doue, The Sparrow that neglects his life for loue, The houshold bird with the redd stomacher Thou makst the Blackbird speede as soone, As doth the Goldfinch, or the Halcyon The Husband Cock lookes out and soone is spedd And meets his wife, which brings her feather-bed. This day more cheerfully than ever shine
  
  This day which might inflame thy selfe old Valentine."
  
  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."
  
  The earliest surviving valentine is a 15th-century rondeau written by Charles, Duke of Orléans to his wife, which commences.
  
  " Je suis desja d'amour tanné Ma tres doulce Valentinée... "
  
  At the time, the duke was being held in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt, 1415.
  
  The earliest surviving valentines in English appear to be those in the Paston Letters, written in 1477 by Margery Brews to her future husband John Paston "my right well-beloved Valentine".
  
  Saint Valentine's Day is mentioned ruefully by Ophelia in William Shakespeare 's Hamlet (1600–1601):
  
  "To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day, All in the morning betime, And I a maid at your window, To be your Valentine. Then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes, And dupp'd the chamber-door; Let in the maid, that out a maid Never departed more."
  
  John Donne used the legend of the marriage of the birds as the starting point for his epithalamion celebrating the marriage of Elizabeth, daughter of James I of England, and Frederick V, Elector Palatine, on Valentine's Day:
  
  "Hayle Bishop Valentine whose day this is
  
  All the Ayre is thy Diocese And all the chirping Queristers And other birds ar thy parishioners Thou marryest every yeare The Lyrick Lark, and the graue whispering Doue, The Sparrow that neglects his life for loue, The houshold bird with the redd stomacher Thou makst the Blackbird speede as soone, As doth the Goldfinch, or the Halcyon The Husband Cock lookes out and soone is spedd And meets his wife, which brings her feather-bed. This day more cheerfully than ever shine
  
  This day which might inflame thy selfe old Valentine."
  
  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."