We come, then, to the consideration of this specific quality that distinguishes what we recognise as poetry from all other verbal expression. Returning for a moment to Paradise Lost, we find that here is a work of art of which the visible and external sign is words. That it has three qualities--there may be more, but it is not to the point--architectural power, moral exaltation and a sense of character, each of which, although it may be more impressive when presented as it were under the auspices of the poetic quality, can exist independently of it.