His Shadow

[2] It relates a conversation in which the poet defends his character from the insinuations of his own shadow, and it parodies a popular medieval genre in which the Soul remonstrates with the Body.

Both poems are notable for the lively colloqialism of their reported speech, and Dafydd's also for its virtuoso use of dyfalu, the stringing together of imaginative and hyperbolic similes and metaphors.

[10][11] Though Dafydd's antagonist in this poem is not his soul several critics have interpreted it as being his conscience,[12][13][14] which is able to charge him with all his secret sins because, as Patrick Ford wrote, "the shadow knows!".

[16] His skill in presenting the reported speech in a racy, colloquial style despite the exigencies of a very demanding metre is also demonstrated in, for example, "The Magpie's Advice" and "The Dawn".

[17] He wrote other poems in which an alter ego criticises Dafydd's attitudes and way of life: "The Magpie's Advice", "His Penis", "The Girls of Llanbadarn", and "The Poet and the Grey Friar".