Good evening and welcome to bedtime with Bavis. Tonight I'll be reading another excerpt from

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman.

Song of the Broad Axe

Weapon Shapely Naked Weapons shapely, naked, wan, head from the mother's bowels drawn, wooded flesh and metal bone, limb only one and lip only none.

Gray blue leaf by red heat groan.

Helve produced from a little seed sown, resting the grass amid and a pond, to be leaned and to lean on.

Strong shapes and attributes of strong shapes, masculine trades, sights and sounds, long varied train of an emblem, dabs of music, fingers of the organist skipping staccato over the keys of the great organ.

Welcome are all Earth's lands, each for its kind.

Welcome our lands of pine and oak.

Welcome our lands of the lemon and fig. Welcome our lands of the lemon and fig.

Welcome our lands of gold.

Welcome our lands of wheat and maize.

Welcome are those of the grape.

Welcome our lands of sugar and rice.

Welcome the cotton lands.

Welcome those of the white potato and sweet potato.

Welcome our mountains, flats, sands, forests, prairies.

Welcome the rich borders of rivers, tablelands, openings.

Welcome the measureless grazing lands.

Welcome the teeming soil of orchards, flax, honey, hemp. Welcome just as much the other more hard-faced lands.

Lands rich as lands of gold or wheat and fruit lands.

Lands of mines, lands of the manly and rugged oars, lands of coal, copper, lead, tin, zinc,

...