Fragment 95 (Voigt 104a)

Ϝέσπερε, πάντα φέρων, ὄσα φαίνολις ἔσκέδασ’ αὔως,
φέρεις οἶν, φέρες αἶγα, φέρεις ἄπυ ματέρι παῖδα.

Thus imitated by Byron:—

O Hesperus, thou bringest all good things—
Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer,
To the young bird the parent’s brooding wings,
The welcome stall to the o’erlaboured steer;
Whate’er of peace about our hearthstone clings,
Whate’er our household gods protect of dear,
Are gathered round us by thy look of rest;
Thou bring’st the child too to its mother’s breast.
Don Juan, iii. 107.

And by Tennyson:—

The ancient poetess singeth, that Hesperus all things bringeth,
Smoothing the wearied mind: bring me my love, Rosalind.
Thou comest morning or even; she cometh not morning or evening.
False-eyed Hesper, unkind, where is my sweet Rosalind?
Leonine Elegiacs, 1830-1884.

Hesperus brings all things back
Which the daylight made us lack,
Brings the sheep and goats to rest,
Brings the baby to the breast.
— Edwin Arnold, 1869.

Hesper, thou bringest back again
All that the gaudy daybeams part,
The sheep, the goat, back to their pen,
The child home to his mother’s heart.
— Frederick Tennyson, 1890.

Evening, all things thou bringest
Which dawn spread apart from each other;
The lamb and the kid thou bringest,
Thou bringest the boy to his mother.
— J. A. Symonds, 1883.

Hesper, whom the poet call’d the Bringer home of all good things.
— Tennyson, Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, 1886.

From the Etymologicum Magnum, where it is adduced to show the meaning of αὔως, ‘dawn.’ The fragment occurs also in Demetrius, as an example of Sappho’s grace. One cannot but believe that Catullus had in his mind some such hymeneal ode of Sappho’s as that in which this fragment must have occurred when he wrote his Vesper adest, juvenes, consurgite: Vesper Olympo, etc. (lxii.), part of which was imitated in the colloquy between Opinion and Truth in Ben Jonson’s The Barriers.