Knowledge

Knowledge is a familiarity, awareness, or understanding of someone or something, such as facts, information, descriptions, or skills.

Poem

Your mind is a meadow

To plant for your needs

You are the farmer

With knowledge of seeds,

Don't leave your meadow

Unplanted and bare,

Sow it with knowledge

And tend it with care.

Who'd be a know-nothing

When he might grow

Of stars and snow;

The science of numbers,

The stories of the time,

The magic of music,

The secrets of rhyme?

Don't be a know-nothing!

Plant in the spring,

And see what harvest

The summer will bring.

Summary:

In the poem knowledge, the poet expresses her opinion about the value of knowledge for young learners. She says that one should know the value of time and make the best use of it for future purposes if she or he wants to get benefited from it. The poet compares the human mind with a meadow and a young learner with a farmer. The poet says that a good farmer does not like to see bare fields. He likes to sow seeds and looks after them with care. In the same way, good learners should not keep his mind empty and be know-nothing or uneducated people. He should plant the seeds of different types of knowledge such as science, astronomy, nature, mathematics, history, music, and literature at the right time. If he keeps his mind busy studying and acquires knowledge from various sources, he or she is sure to get a good outcome in the future and become a knowledgeable, educated, and well-informed person. Like a farmer who works hard takes care of the seeds and plants the whole season, does not let them dry up and spoil and finally harvests his crop after it has ripened. In the same way, a good learner's mind will also ripen with the knowledge to use it in the future if he or she works diligently tirelessly throughout his or her early period of life that is till his or her adulthood.

The poet wants to appeal and alert all the learners to make the best use of the present time. She gives emphasis to the young learners not to waste their time in idle enjoyment and futile work which will lead them to the way of unawareness and ignorance. The time once gone is gone forever, it won’t come back, and then there will be no use of crying over the spilled milk. Therefore the student life is the right time to acquire as much knowledge as possible, and which can be utilized in later life. To utilize time in a proper way and in future be a man of wisdom and intelligentsia, not a know-nothing person.

Questions:

1. What does a know-nothing mean?
2. What can we plant in our minds?
3. What does the poet want to tell us?
4. What does the poet suggest to us not to do?
5. Why does the poet call the reader a farmer?
6. Why does the poet call our mind 'a meadow'?
7. What is our mind compared to the poem?
8. What does the poet want us to plant in our minds?