She began writing verses when she was only seven years of age.
In 1860 her poetry was so much appreciated that she received applications from the editors of various religions magazines to supply poetical contributions. In 1803 she received her first cheque of £10 17s. 6d. This she sent to her father: £10 for anything he liked to employ it on, 10s. for the Scripture Readers' collection, and 7s. 6d. for any similar emergency.
Her hymn "I gave my life for thee" first appeared in Good Words. It was written in Germany in 1858. She had come in weary and sat down opposite a picture with this motto. At once the lines flashed upon her and she wrote them in pencil on a scrap of paper. Reading them over, they did not satisfy her. She tossed them into the fire, but they fell out untouched. Showing them some months after to her father, he encouraged her to preserve them, and wrote the tune "Baca" especially for them.
The origin of the well-known hymn, 'Take my Life,' she thus describes—"I went for a little visit of five days. There were ten persons in the house, some unconverted and long prayed for, some converted, but not rejoicing Christians. He gave me the prayer, 'Lord, give me all in this house.' And He just did! Before I left the house, every one had got a blessing. The last night of my visit I was too happy to sleep, and passed most of the night in praise and renewal of my own consecration, and these little couplets formed themselves, and chimed in my heart one after another, till they finished with 'Ever, ONLY, ALL, for Thee.'"
Some six months before she died she wrote thus about this hymn, "I had a great time early this morning, renewing the never-regretted consecration. I seemed led to run over the 'Take my Life,' and could bless Him verse by verse for having led me on to much more definite consecration than even when I wrote it—voice, gold, intellect, etc. But the eleventh couplet—"
'Take my love—my Lord, I pour
At Thy feet its treasure store'—
"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.