A fir tree stands alone in the north, on a bare height; ice and snow cover it in a white mantle, and it drowses. In four lines Heine draws a cold, still solitude.
And it dreams of a palm that, far away in the East, grieves alone and silent on a wall of burning rock. Two solitudes that never touch — cold and fire, north and south — and the impossible longing between them. It is often read as a yearning for love, or for Heine himself, a German Jew in exile.
The verse is kept in German. Translating it in passing would replace the work with a paraphrase of it.