Traditionally, poetic anthologies have not been seen as single, compositional wholes. However, this article shall employ translations of Heinrich Heine to demonstrate that such collections are not mere random occurrences. Rather, they may be characterised by a certain deliberation and a sense of their own compositional completeness. The analysis here posed allows us to raise the question of the relationship between translations of poetic cycles/anthologies and their arrangement as cycles in the original. We shall also consider the original creative intentions of translators who take pains to select the verses they will work upon and to assemble them for publication. We shall argue that translation anthologies must balance two motivations: the effort to represent the lyrical decisions of the original author and the effort to create a new lyric cycle on the part of the translator/co-author.