Me as the ghost of birthdays past. The only photo I have of me in the Birthday Hat. Out of focus cuz it's too big, but otherwise it's too small.
I'm not a huge fan of Yeats but it's my birthday &, well, here it is. This is from a 1936 letter to the younger poet Dorothy Wellesley:
Gogarty once describd the wit & phantasy of a friend of his calld Tancred (who was he declared a descendant of the Crusader of that name). I knew him once, he had just been received into the Catholic Church. The ceremony over, some priest asked what had led him to th truth & Tancred said "I was in the Brompton Oratory & I saw on a tablet 'Pray for the soul of Elinor de Vaux' & I thought the name so beautiful that I wantd to gain the privilege of praying for her."