Scottish

Hugh MacDiarmid wrote "The Watergaw" in a Scots dialect. I have translated the poem into modern English to make it easier to read and understand. A watergaw is a fragmentary rainbow. 

The Watergaw
by Hugh MacDiarmid
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

These are my modern English translations of poems by the first poet we know by name, the ancient Sumerian poet Enheduanna, other wonderful ancient female poets like Sappho and Tzu Yeh, the great Jewish Holocaust poet Miklos Radnoti, the ancient Scottish poet William Dunbar, the eclectic German poet Georg Trakl, the avant garde English poet Pauline Mary Tarn, who wrote poems in French as Renee Vivien, and other poets from around the globe so famous that we know them by a single name, such as Basho, Chaucer, Corinna,

These are my modern English translations of the great Scottish poet William Dunbar.

Sweet Rose of Virtue
by William Dunbar (c. 1460-1530)
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Sweet rose of virtue and of gentleness,
delightful lily of youthful wantonness,
richest in bounty and in beauty clear
and in every virtue men hold most dear,
except only that you are merciless.