[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. :-)
They both slipped away for a shower [Rosie] I think the word "amphibrach" is a dactyl, stress on the first syllable. I must admit (perhaps because of a musical sort of background) I'd never really considered the whole-phrases question in that light. In music it's 3/4 (or whatever) regardless of the lyrics fall. By that perception a limerick line is always three amphibrachs (or two and an iamb), whatever the enjambement. It's when you get into freer verse, like sonnets, that it gets really hard to judge. We had a discussion a while back about whether "Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day" is really five iambs, or (as your view suggests) a dactyl, spondee, anapest and iamb (or maybe choriamb, dactyl, antibacchius). Anyway, the only reason for posting on it was that I just found this, which is surely the most definitive list of metrical feet to be found on the web. Anyone for some double asclepiads?