Perhaps the entity most directly threatened by the cultural embrace of science was the imagination itself. Under assault by a phalanx of biologists, botanists, geologists, naturalists, and mathematicians, the imagination that had for millennia engaged the natural world and coaxed it into wonder seemed like a pleasant game for children. If the imagination cannot engage the material world, that world would suddenly seem indifferent, mechanical, and anything but astounding.

Dunbar hesitates to concede the power of the imagination. An angel—an ethereal creature that defies the tight boundaries of the scientific method—is the impetus for the dazzle of the sunrise. In “Dawn,” Dunbar draws on a sensibility that returns humanity to its ancient roots when generations of scientists looked to the cosmos not as a riddle to be solved, but as a grand drama involving elements, entities, and energies humanity could not begin to understand. With its gods and goddesses, angels and demons, the cosmos once invited and then opened up the imagination to the splendor of possibilities. That a spritely angel might ignite dawn by gently kissing a sleeping Night seems childlike and naïve. Exactly, counters the poet.