No. You may make verses on Taglioni’s feet, (though if she be a poetess, she can do that better than you, standing, too, on one leg, like the man that Horace speaks of); but you cannot make them of her feet. Feet of which verses are composed are made of syllables, not of bones, muscles, and ligaments.
Feet and pauses are the constituent parts of a verse.
We have heard one boy ask another, who was singing, “How much is that a yard?” still the yard is not a poetical measure.
The feet which are used in poetry consist either of two or of three syllables. There are four kinds of feet of two, and an equal number of three syllables. Four and four are eight: therefore Pegasus is an octoped; and if our readers do not understand this logic, we are sorry for it. But as touching the feet—we have
1. The Trochee, which has the first syllable accented, and the last unaccented: as, “Yānkĕe dōodlĕ.”
2. The Iambus, which has the first syllable unaccented, and the last accented: as, “Thĕ māid hĕrsēlf wĭth roūge, ălās! bĕdaūbs.”
3. The Spondee, which has both the words or syllables accented: as, “Āll hāil, grēat kīng, Tōm Thūmb, āll haīl!”
4. The Pyrrhic, which has both the words or syllables unaccented: as, “Ŏn thĕ tree-top.”
5. The Dactyl, which has the first syllable accented and the two latter unaccented: as, “Jōnăthăn, Jēffĕrsŏn.”
6. The Amphibrach has the first and last syllables unaccented and the middle one accented: as, “Oĕ’rwħelmĭng, trănspōrtĕd, ĕcstātĭc, dĕlīghtfŭl, ăccēptĕd, ăddrēssĕs.”