ill 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