Abstract: Poets in the Song Dynasty were so enthusiastic about dreaming ancient figures in their dreams that they recorded the dreams in their poetry. This practice is rooted in the tradition of historical dream imagery and in poetic precedents prior to the dynasty. The poets’ creative motivations fall into four categories. Firstly, spiritual identification with predecessors is achieved through reading. Secondly, dreams are integrated into elegies of bygone eras to lament dynastic rise and fall. Thirdly, poems or literary critiques are composed under the names of ancient masters to enhance authority. Fourthly, ancient figures in dreams are invoked to express personal aspirations. In image construction, a dual approach of deification and humanization emerges. Some figures are portrayed as transcendent to convey reverence, while others are depicted in egalitarian dialogic settings to bridge psychological distance. In terms of narrative, multiple shifts in time and space are employed, with expressions deepened through contrast or continuity between dream and reality. The dreaming-of-ancient-figures motif in the poetry of the dynasty paradigmatically manifests a the poets’intellectual veneration for literary antecedents. It also reveals the struggle to alleviate anxiety while seeking self-transcendence, which actually presents a conflicted state of mind of them.