When You Are Old Quizzes

When You Are Old Quiz

1 Which book did this poem first appear in?
Cathleen Ní Houlihan

A Book of Irish Verse

The Tower

The Rose
2 What does "glad" most closely mean in this work's context?
Happy

Comfortable

Pleasing

Soft
3 What is the poem's meter?
Iambic pentameter

Dactylic Pentameter

Free Verse

Iambic Tetrameter
4 Which real-life figure was the poem likely addressed to?
Teresa Deevy

Maud Gonne

Georgiana Hyde-Lees

James Joyce
5 Which best describes the relationship between the speaker and the addressee?
Lost love

Political solidarity

Familial obligation

Baseless hatred
6 Which of the following words is an instance of onomatopoeia?
Shadows

Crowd

Grace

Murmur
7 Which does NOT describe the poem's tone?
Bitter

Melancholy

Regretful

Zealous
8 How does the speaker characterize his own love as distinct?
He explains that he has loved the addressee for longer than anyone else

He insists that his love is a mystical, almost magic force

He argues that he actually wants to help the addressee rather than just admire her

He implies that he loves the addressee for non-superficial reasons
9 The poem's contrast between the home and the wilderness is an instance of which of the following?
Hyperbole

Personification

Juxtaposition

Parallelism
10 Which best describes the poem's setting?
A magical realm

A Victorian Dublin schoolyard

An abandoned castle in Europe

A house in twentieth-century Ireland
11 How many stanzas are in this poem?
One

Three

Five

Four
12 What is the poem's rhyme scheme?
ABAB

ABBA

AABB

ABC
13 Which line features alliterative G sounds?
When you are old and grey and full of sleep

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

How many loved your moments of glad grace

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you
14 Which emotion is personified in this poem?
Sadness

Love

Regret

Fury
15 Which of the following is true of Maud Gonne?
She was best known as a painter

She was an Irish revolutionary

She was American

She was opposed to Yeats's radical politics
16 Which of the following is true of this poem?
It is written in the second person

It is a direct commentary on Irish independence

It is written from the point of view of an inanimate object

Its primary theme is the nature of consciousness
17 Which is a conflict in the poem?
The disagreement between a young woman and her parents

The dislike between the speaker and the woman he is engaged to

The fight between Irish revolutionaries and the British government

The tension between youthful passion and the jadedness of age
18 Who is the poem's speaker?
An old man looking back at his youth

A young woman looking forward to old age

A house remembering everything that has happened within its walls

An unidentified man, most likely a version of Yeats himself
19 Which of the following is true of this poem and the way it engages with time?
It mostly takes place in a hypothetical, imagined future

It is about time travel to Ireland's past

It describes a person who cannot distinguish the past from the future

It takes place over a series of flashbacks
20 Which of the following themes does this poem engage with most?
Music and art

Nature and its destruction

Motherhood

Aging and time
21 This poem is based on an earlier work by whom?
Pierre de Ronsard

Petrarch

Seamus Heaney

Christina Rosetti
22 How is the addressee characterized by the speaker?
As a kind person whose anger disguises her good intentions

As a person so repressed by the norms of her time that she has no real personality

As a likable but cruel schemer

As superficially charming, but full of hidden depths
23 What types of stanzas are in the poem?
Tercets

Couplets

Octaves

Quatrains
24 The phrase "when you are old and grey" contains which of the following?
Simile

End rhyme

Metonymy

Allusion
25 Which of the following is one meaning of the word "pilgrim"?
Romantic and softhearted

Sickly

A traveler to a religious site

A gifted student

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Study Guide for When You Are Old

When You Are Old study guide contains a biography of William Butler Yeats, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

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