Deleting poems

We come now to the first instance of deletion.

Here is the original:

Life of my life, I shall ever try to keep my body pure, knowing that thy living touch is upon all my limbs.
I shall ever try to keep all untruths out from my thoughts, knowing that thou art that truth which has kindled the light of reason in my mind.
I shall ever try to drive all evils away from my heart and keep my love in flower, knowing that thou hast thy seat in the inmost shrine of my heart.
And it shall be my endeavour to reveal thee in my actions, knowing it is thy power gives me strength to act.

This poem doesn’t have the clunky turn of phrase that weights other poems down. What it does have is a seriously boring, goody-goody attitude on the part of the narrator towards his god. The beauty of Gitanjali, its astonishing power, comes in large part from the unusual depictions of the relationship between the narrator and his god. It comes also from the language of ecstasy. And then, in the middle of poems that are sensual, ecstatic, intimate, we have a poem like this one, which has an odd buttoned-up morality to it. Very boring. Out it goes.

(I did try to de-clunk it, by the way, hoping that some redeeming quality would shine through when I dusted the poem off. But no.)