Poet obviously never short with a chap (10)
I believe the answer is:
longfellow
'poet' is the definition.
(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807-1882)
'never short with a chap' is the wordplay.
'never short' becomes 'long' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'with' says to put letters next to each other.
'a chap' becomes 'fellow' (both can mean a man).
'long'+'fellow'='LONGFELLOW'
'obviously' acts as a link.
I am not very happy about this link. It may be part of another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for longfellow that I've seen before include "Song of_Hiawatha poet" , "American poet, author of 17" , "Hiawatha poet" .)