“A while they whisper; then to Jove address’d, Philemon thus prefers their joint request: ‘We crave to serve before your sacred shrine, And offer at your altar rites divine: And since not any action of our life Has been polluted with domestic strife, We beg one hour of death, that neither she With widow’s tears may live to bury me, Nor weeping I, with wither’d arms, may bear My breathless Baucis to the sepulchre.’ The godheads sign their suit. They run the race In the same tenor all the appointed space: Then, when their hour was come, while they relate These past adventures at the temple gate, Old Baucis is by old Philemon seen Sprouting with sudden leaves of sprightly green: Old Baucis look’d where old Philemon stood, And saw his lengthen’d arms a sprouting wood: New roots their fasten’d feet begin to bind, Their bodies stiffen in a rising rind: Then, ere the bark above their shoulders grew, They give and take at once their last adieu. ‘At once farewell, O faithful spouse,’ they said;