This new question has 'quite another sense' than that of the question,
What is the meaning or content expressed by the form of a poem? The new
question asks, What is it that the _poem_, the unity of this content and
form, is trying to express? This 'beyond' is beyond the content as well
as the form.
Of course, I should add, it is not _merely_ beyond them or outside of
them. If it were, they (the poem) could not 'suggest' it. They are a
partial manifestation of it, and point beyond themselves to it, both
because they _are_ a manifestation and because this is partial.
The same thing is true, not only (as is remarked in the text) of the
other arts and of religion and philosophy, but also of what is commonly
called reality. This reality is a manifestation of a different order
from poetry, and in certain important respects a much more imperfect
manifestation. Hence, as was pointed out (pp. 6, 7, note B), poetry is
not a copy of it, but in dealing with it idealises it, and in doing so
produces in certain respects a fuller manifestation. On the other hand,
that imperfect 'reality' has for us a character in which poetry is
deficient,--the character in virtue of which we call it 'reality.' It
is, we feel, thrust upon us, not made by us or by any other man. And in
this respect it seems more akin than poetry to that 'beyond,' or
absolute, or perfection, which we want, which partially expresses itself
in both, and which could not be perfection and could not satisfy us if
it were not real (though it cannot be real in the same sense as that
imperfect 'reality'). This seems the ultimate ground of the requirement
that poetry, though no copy of 'reality,' should not be mere 'fancy,'
but should refer to, and interpret, that 'reality.' For that reality,
however imperfectly it reveals perfection, is at least no mere fancy.
(Not that the merest fancy can fail to reveal something of perfection.)
The lines quoted on p. 26 are from a fragment of Shelley's beginning 'Is
it that in some brighter sphere.'