[Rosie] - Ensuring avoiding offending[Rosie] There you go. I've often wondered whether you can only count whole words as feet or whether you can run over the barlines, so to speak. Is the first line above made of three amphibrachs, or a single syllable followed by two dactyls then a trochee? Perhaps there is no answer.
Let's talk Anglo-Saxon (Projoy) I think you can run over the barlines, as you say, if the two words are part of a phrase but I think it would be stretching the definition to breaking point to call that first line 3 amphibrachs. One possibly i.e. "amphibrach" but I'm not sure where the stress lies. It's not in my Concise Oxford Dictionary 1964. Too bloody concise, obviously. :-)