johannes susato wrote: The original text is as follows:

"Cum tibi, nascentis percepto tempore, forma
constiterit caeli, stellis ad signa locatis,
transverso Phoebus si cardine celsior ibit,
qui tenet exortum vel qui demergit in undas,
per tempus licet affirmes natum esse diei.
At, si subiectis senis fulgebit in astris
inferior dextra laevaque tenentibus orbem
cardinibus, noctis fuerit per tempora natus."

My attempt to translate the underlined part of the text:

"When Phoebus [the Sun] will go higher than the transverse cardinal
which holds the beginning or wich sinks in the waves, . . . "
and:
". . . lower than [beneath] those cardinals, which - to the right and to the left - hold the circle of the world."

This is, as Tzadde rightly says, the axis AC-DC, and as Gabe says, 'a rather tortuous way' to describe it.
But I think it is also a very poetical way to describe and teach Astrology two thousand years before our times.

Johannes