Good evening and welcome to bedtime with Bavis.

Tonight it is my pleasure to share with you an excerpt from Leaves of Grass

by Walt Whitman. Song of Myself.

I celebrate myself and sing myself.

And what I assume you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to

you.

I loaf and invite my soul, I lean and loaf at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, formed from this soil, this air.

Born here, of parents born here, from parents the same, and their parents the same.

I, now 37 years old, in perfect health begin,

hoping to cease not till death.

Creed's in schools in abeyance, retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten.

I harbor for good or bad. I permit to speak at every hazard.

Nature without check, with original energy.

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes. The shelves are crowded with perfumes.

I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it.

The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume.

It has no taste of the distillation. It is odorless.

It is in my mouth forever. I am in love with it. I will go to the bank by the wood and become

undisguised and naked.

I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

...