Also 7 sphear. [f. prec.]
1. trans. To enclose in or as in a sphere; to encircle, engirdle, surround. Also with about.
1607. Chapman, Bussy d’Ambois, I. i. 31. Spreading all our reaches As if each private arm would sphere the earth. Ibid. (c. 1611), Iliad, XVIII. 185. When any towne is spher’d With siege of such a foe, as kils mens mindes.
16[?]. Middleton, etc. Old Law, V. i. A place at hand we were all strangers in, So spher’d about with music.
1856. Mrs. Browning, Aur. Leigh, III. 309. I resolved by prose to make a space to sphere my living verse.
1866. W. R. Alger, Solit. Nat. & Man, II. 43. Mourners, sphered by their dark garb in a sacred and touching solitude.
2. To make into a sphere; to fill up or ‘crown’ with liquor.
1605. B. Jonson, Masque of Blackness, Wks. (Rtldg.), 547/2. An urn sphered with wine.
a. 1849. H. Coleridge, Ess. (1851), I. 272. Who could endure to see the sweet creature take a trumpet and sphere her bias cheeks like fame?
b. fig. To form into a rounded or perfect whole.
1615. Chapman, Odyss., XVIII. 297. That no more my mone Might waste my blood … For want of that accomplisht vertue spher’d In my lou’d Lord.
1622. Massinger & Dekker, Virg. Martyr, IV. i. You, hitherto, Have still had goodness sphered within your eyes, Let not that orb be broken.
1847. Tennyson, Princess, IV. 129. Not vassals to be beat,… but living wills, and sphered Whole in ourselves and owed to none.
3. To place in a sphere or among the spheres; to set in the heavens.
1606. Shaks., Tr. & Cr., I. iii. 90. And therefore is the glorious Planet Sol In noble eminence, enthron’d and sphear’d Amid’st the other.
1657. W. Morice, Coena quasi Κοινὴ, xxii. 215. All that fire which is spheared on high and separate from commixture, is a pure element.
1667. Milton, P. L., VII. 247. Light … from her Native East To journie through the airie gloom began, Sphear’d in a radiant Cloud.
1820. Shelley, Fiordispina, 26. But thou art as a planet sphered above.
1847. Tennyson, Princess, IV. 418. I would have reach’d you had you been Sphered up with Cassiopëia. Ibid. (1850), In Mem., ix. Sphere all your lights around, above; Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow.
b. fig. To set aloft or aloof; to place above the common reach.
1615. Brathwait, Strappado (1878), 190. The minds internall soueraignesse doth sit, As a great Princesse, much admired at, Sphered and reared in her chaire of state.
1649. G. Daniel, Trinarch., Rich. II., lxxxii. Maiestie should be sphear’d Beyond the common Eye.
1853. Lytton, My Novel, VI. iv. The pale reflex and imitation of some bright mind, sphered out of reach and afar.
1861. Ld. Lytton & Fane, Tannhäuser, 14. That so august a spirit, sphered so fair, Should from the starry sessions of his peers Decline.
4. To send about in a circle; to turn round in all directions.
1648. Herrick, Hesper., His Age, xix. We’l still sit up, Sphering about the wassail cup, To all those times, Which gave me honour for my Rhimes.
1820. Keats, Hyperion, I. 117. Open thine eyes eterne, and sphere them round Upon all space.
5. intr. To center in something.
1856. Masson, Ess. Biog. & Crit., i. 34. The very same soul … was also related with inordinate keenness and intimacy to all that this life spheres in.
Hence Sphering vbl. sb. Also attrib.
1818. Keats, Endym., II. 251. One of those Who, when this sphering time doth close, Will be its high remembrancers.
1877. Symonds, Renaiss. It., vi. 323. How those mighty master spirits watched the sphering of new planets in the spiritual skies.
