Who is caedmon, and how does the excerpt describe him?

Cædmon is the earliest English  poet whose name is known. An Anglo-Saxon who cared for the animals at the double monastery of Streonæshalch  during the abbacy of St. Hilda , he was originally ignorant of "the art of song" but learned to compose one night in the course of a dream, according to the 8th-century historian Bede. He later became a zealous monk and an accomplished and inspirational Christian poet.