What's wrong with moving on from the "original impulse" of the poem? Why is the original impulse sacred? As a reader, I really don't care whether the poem reflects the poet's original impulse. I just want it to be a good poem, and if the poet had a better impulse than his original impulse a few years down the line, that's fine with me.
The reason to revise is because we are not satisfied with what we have written and we feel we can possibly improve it and be more satisfied. This is obvious, isn't it? Didn't Yeats revise his poems all his life, and, in the view of most people, consistently improve them?
It's hard to make a general rule about what is too much revision. It depends on the person. If the revisions aren't succeeding, and become merely a way to spin one's wheels while not writing other poems (or doing other things) that are more worthwhile, then it's a problem. But if the time spent revising doesn't halt our progress in other areas, and it improves our poems, what could be wrong?
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