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Poets soon, say, enthralling loner in distress

Ross

I believe the answer is:

erelong

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'poets soon' is the definition.
I can't judge whether this defines the answer.

'say enthralling loner in distress' is the wordplay.
'say' becomes 'eg' (short for 'exempli gratia', 'for example' in Latin).
'enthralling' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'in distress' indicates anagramming the letters.
'loner' with letters rearranged gives 'relon'.
'eg' placed around 'relon' is 'ERELONG'.

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for erelong that I've seen before include "Soon (arch.)" , "Soon (poetically)" , "Soon (archaic)" , "Soon (poetic)" .)

I've seen this clue in The Daily Mail.
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