When Tagore first published the English Gitanjali in 1912, it featured an introduction by the celebrated Irish poet William Butler Yeats, who notes: "I have often had to close it lest some stranger would see how much it moved me." This was just one of the many glowing comments that Yeats made about the volume, which he helped Tagore publish. This lavish praise, coupled with the fact that the volume led to Tagore becoming the first Asian to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature (1913), whipped the public into a frenzy. Critics and readers both agreed with Yeats's comments, praising the book and buying enough copies to warrant several printings. For example, in an influential 1913 article on Tagore for the Fortnightly Review, Ezra Pound notes: "There is the same sort of common sense in the first part of the New Testament, the same happiness in some of the...