The second stanza:
De parentis protoplasti fraude factor condolens,
quando pomi noxialis morte morsu corruit,
ipse lignum tunc notavit, damna ligni ut solveret.
Percy Dearmer:
God in pity saw man fallen,
Shamed and sunk in misery,
When he fell on death by tasting
Fruit of the forbidden tree;
Then another tree was chosen
Which the world from death should free.
More literally: The Maker (factor: maker, doer, performer, perpetrator.
In ball games, the batsman), sympathising with the cheating of the
first-formed parent (Adam),
when he fell on death by the bite of a deadly apple,
then designated a tree, that he might undo the damage of a tree.
(damnum: hurt, harm, damage, injury; a fine, penalty).
Note the balanced scheme: paradise has been lost by a tree, paradise will be
restored by another tree. There is a strategy behind all this, which will
become
apparent in our next stanza.
Fortunatus has a taste for alliteration: 'parentis protoplasti', 'fraude
factor', 'morte morsu', and for curious and unusual words. He didn't
actually invent 'protoplastus' (from the Greek protoplastos,
'first-formed'); it is used a couple of time by Tertullian, and by Alcimus
Avitus (who? I hear you cry - a Christian writer, d. 523).
The Supple Doctor.
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