“that has been unconsciously not filled up.  Somehow, I felt mystified and out of my depth here; it was a simple and definite thing to be done, to settle the voice, or silver and gold; but ‘love?’ I have to love others, and I do; and I’ve not a small treasure of it; and even loving in Him does not quite meet the inner difficulty....  I shall just go forward and expect Him to fill it up, and let my life from this day answer really to that couplet.  The worst part to me is that I don’t in practice prove my love to Him, by delight in much and long communion with Him; hands and head seem so full of other things’ (which yet are His given work), that ‘heart’ seems not ‘free to serve’ in fresh and vivid love.”

In writing her hymns, F.R.  Havergal looked up to God to give her the ideas and words, and they were often produced very rapidly.  Mr. Snepp of Perry Bar left her leaning against a wall while he went in to visit the boys’ school, and on his return ten minutes afterwards she handed him the well-known hymn “Golden harps are sounding,” pencilled upon an old envelope.

A remarkable fact is recorded in connection with another hymn entitled, “Reality, Reality, Lord Jesus Christ, Thou art to me.”  She was much struck with the expression used by a working man in a prayer-meeting—­“Father, we know the reality of Jesus Christ.”  This thought took hold of her and found expression in this hymn on a stormy night at Whitby, after she had seen the life-boat put forth to a wreck, hence the expressions, “Pilot,” “Lifeboat,” and “Haven.”  The very night she wrote the hymn, a young Christian four hundred miles away was pleading at a prayer-meeting, “Lord Jesus, let Thy dear servant write for us what Thou art, Thou living, bright Reality, and let her do it this very night.”  “While they are yet speaking, I will hear.”

Space does not permit any detailed account of her poetry.  Her’s were specially songs of the inner life.  She revealed in her poetic works her own inner experience, and a perusal of them will give indications of her own growth in holiness.

A reader is impressed not only with the ease and brightness of her style, but with her firm grasp of things unseen.  Her poetry was not just stringing together words, but it was the very expression of her heart.  She thus writes on this point in The Ministry of Song: 

     “Poetry is not a trifle,
        Lightly thought and lightly made;
      Not a fair and scentless flower,
      Gaily cultured for an hour,
        Then as gaily left to fade.

     ’Tis not stringing rhymes together,
        In a pleasant true accord;
      Not the music of the metre,
      Not the happy fancies sweeter
        Than a flower-bell honey-stored.

     ’Tis the essence of existence,
        Rarely rising to the light;
      And the songs that echo longest,
      Deepest, fullest, truest, strongest,
        With your life-blood you must write.”