There is, however, another respect in which painting yields place to poetry and music, and that is in its lyrical quality. The art of poetry can not only develop emotions and ideas generally as such respectively, but also in their transitions, movement, and increased intensity. In respect to concentrated intensity this is yet more the case in music, which is essentially concerned with soul-movement. To represent this painting has nothing beyond the expression of face and pose; and if it does exclusively direct its effort, to what is actually lyrical, it misconceives the means at hand. However much the soul's passion may be expressed in the play of the countenance or bodily movement, such expression should not be directly referable to emotion as such, but to emotions in so far as they are present, with a _definite_ mode of expression, in an event or action. The fact that it reveals ideality in external form therefore does not connote the abstract meaning that it makes the nature of the soul visible by means of physiognomy and form, under the mode of which it expresses soul-life; it is rather just the individual situation of an action, passion in some specific outburst thereof, by means of which the emotion is unfolded and recognized. When, therefore, it is attempted to interpret the poetical quality of painting under the assumption that it should express the soul's emotion directly, without a motive and action more near to it in facial expression and pose, all that we do in such a case is to throw the art back upon an abstraction, which its effort should precisely strive to be rid of; we ask of it, in short, that it should master the peculiar and just contribution of poetry; and if it attempts to do this the result will be a barren and stale one.