Dream Galaxy

Anecdote collection · Water

My wife wrote me a poem in the dream

Chengcheng, Shaanxi, China · c. 880

醉後，夢其妻取筆硯，篋中取紅箋，剪數寸而為詩曰：「楚水平如鏡，周回白鳥飛。金陵幾多地，一去不知歸。」

Original text — Taiping Guangji, dream volumes 276–282, Li Fang et al. (compilers)

Drunk, he dreamed that his wife took brush and inkstone, cut a few inches of red paper from her box and wrote: “The waters of Chu lie flat as a mirror; white birds circle round. How far is Jinling? Once gone, you do not know to return.”

Translation · Editorial translation (draft)

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Source
Taiping Guangji, dream volumes 276–282 — Li Fang et al. (compilers), 978
Rights
Public domain (ancient text)
Record type
Anecdote collection
Place
Chengcheng, Shaanxi, China · Chinese
Date
c. 880
Uncertainty
High — On waking he found the poem under his mat; his wife, he later learned, died that very day.
Imagery
Partner · Writing · Water · Bird · Lake
Feelings
Longing · Grief

How traditions have read this kind of dream

Psychological

Early dream researchers often linked water imagery to bodily sensation and mood; later psychoanalytic writers read deep water as a figure for what lies below awareness. Modern researchers treat such readings as interpretive traditions rather than findings.

cf. Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams (1911)

Mythological

Many cosmologies begin with primordial waters — the deep of Genesis, the Babylonian Apsu, the cosmic ocean of Hindu myth — so water often stands for origins, boundaries and crossings between worlds.

Comparative mythology

Chinese traditions

In Chinese poetry water carries time and loss — “all things flow east like water” (Li Bai) — while Daoist texts praise water as soft yet enduring.

Li Bai; Daodejing ch. 8

These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.

Dreams that share its images