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."
So did the sweet singer herself write from her own experience.
Her hymns, which are very numerous, no less than seventy being in common use, have been the means not only of arresting the undecided and helping the saint, but of consoling the suffering and the doubting. So many of her poems were the expressions of a bright faith and simple trust shining out through storm and cloud, that others, storm-tossed and beclouded, catch the rays and are cheered thereby.
Although many of the poems are in a plaintive minor tone there are occasional bursts of more cheerful strain, as in the lines on "A Merrie Christmas," which appeared in the Sunday at Home.
"A Merrie Christmas to you!
For we serve the Lord with mirth.
And we carol forth glad tidings
Of our holy Saviour's birth.
So we keep the olden greeting,
With its meaning deep and true,
And wish a Merrie Christmas
And a Happy New Year to you.
Oh, yes! 'a Merrie Christmas,'
With blithest song and smile,
Bright with the thought of Him who dwelt
On earth a little while,