The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses

Welsh festival life, biblical history and private grief meet in J. C. Manning's collection of verse. Its opening poem follows incidents in Saul's career that lead towards his death on Mount Gilboa. Manning explains that he shortened the poem to meet the Wrexham National Eisteddfod's 200-line limit in 1876, then restored its fuller shape for publication. His preface places the collection across twenty-five years of writing alongside newspaper work, accounting for its changing moods and subjects.

The shorter pieces bring Welsh language and identity into everyday scenes of work, faith and family. A festival prologue welcomes rich and poor to share art and song, while 'Change' sets a young woman's summer hopes against winter sorrow. The contents also include elegies, love poems, fables and verses about industrial disasters. Readers interested in Welsh literary culture can find public celebration and personal feeling expressed through regular rhyme and familiar images of birds, flowers and the seasons.