this is a simple python script that will parse your html and put all the values into a list and print it out. You can either write the rest of your script in python, or call this script from python, or plug this short code as a snippet in bash. Check out the examples below.

test.html

< h1>header1< /h1>

< h2>header2< /h2>

< h2>otherHeader2< /h2>

< h1>lastHeader1< /h1>

< h2>lastHeader2< /h2>

parse_header.py

#!/usr/bin/env python

import sys, re

print re.findall(r'< hd>(.*)< /hd>', sys.stdin.read())

script can be called from bash

cat test.html | parse_header.py

python code can be put into bash script

cat test.html | python -c "import sys, re;print re.findall(r'< hd>(.*)< /hd>', sys.stdin.read())"

the last option I believe is not very readable in your case. It makes more sense if you have some simple code where it's not worth putting it in it's own script.