The DNB explains that Jones composed a number of elegies and eulogies to his county's gentry, beginning in the 1730s with an elegy to the poet and almanac publisher Siôn Rhydderch (d. 1735) and continuing for the next thirty years. He was a master of the techniques of the learned strict metre poets and that he was well versed in their style and subject matter. Rhys copied seventy or so of his poems about 1764, and he presented the collection to his friend and neighbour William Vaughan, of Corsygedol, whom he addressed in several poems. He also composed some love songs, some religious verses, again in the strict metres, together with some occasional free metre pieces, and some ballads. Only his Gorchestion, an anthology of Welsh poetry, is in the ESTC.