John, I thought your T.S. Eliot superb, incidentally. I'd be very surprised if you weren't a winner with that (but what do I know?) I can't for the life of me figure out the saurian reference, though.

Thank you, Rob. I knew what I meant when I wrote it but I've forgotten. I'll get back to you on it.

Emily Dickinson’s Rules for Writing:

1.−Tell it slant−
2. Capitalize−common Nouns−
3. Make the Lexicon− your only Companion−
4. –Dabble in linguistic surprise−
5.−Make the Abstract tangible−
6 .−Dwell in Possibility−

Rob. I think 'saurian' is really about the way Eliot always seems so OLD, not to his actual appearance. Old and cold, don't you know. Does tht make sense?

Not sure, John. Seems a tad obscure to me.

C’mon, now -- if Eliot doesn’t seem lizard-y, are Radcliffe and Smith and McKellen not wizard-y?

O Rob, all this OLD stuff... an old man in a dry month... why should the aged eagle stretch his wings...I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.. and dry stuff too... and desert stuff ... dust, dust, dust of dust..

Lizardy. Definitely. Tennyson is wizardy.

Fair enough.

Eliot's world-weary whinge, 'Why should the aged eagle spread his wings?' got short shrift from Edmund Wilson, who pointed out that the poet was barely in his 40s at the time.

John, perhaps you were thinking of William Plomer's 'The Playboy of the Demi World: 1938'?

D'Arcy Honeybunn has 'The eyes of some old saurian in decay'