When You Are Old Quizzes

When You Are Old Quiz

1 Which book did this poem first appear in?

The Tower

A Book of Irish Verse

Cathleen Ní Houlihan

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

Happy

Pleasing

Soft

Comfortable
3 What is the poem's meter?

Iambic Tetrameter

Free Verse

Dactylic Pentameter

Iambic pentameter
4 Which real-life figure was the poem likely addressed to?

Georgiana Hyde-Lees

James Joyce

Teresa Deevy

Maud Gonne
5 Which best describes the relationship between the speaker and the addressee?

Lost love

Political solidarity

Baseless hatred

Familial obligation
6 Which of the following words is an instance of onomatopoeia?

Grace

Murmur

Shadows

Crowd
7 Which does NOT describe the poem's tone?

Bitter

Regretful

Zealous

Melancholy
8 How does the speaker characterize his own love as distinct?

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

He implies that he loves the addressee for non-superficial reasons

He explains that he has loved the addressee for longer than anyone else

He argues that he actually wants to help the addressee rather than just admire her
9 The poem's contrast between the home and the wilderness is an instance of which of the following?

Personification

Juxtaposition

Hyperbole

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?

Four

One

Five

Three
12 What is the poem's rhyme scheme?

ABC

AABB

ABBA

ABAB
13 Which line features alliterative G sounds?

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you

How many loved your moments of glad grace

When you are old and grey and full of sleep
14 Which emotion is personified in this poem?

Love

Sadness

Fury

Regret
15 Which of the following is true of Maud Gonne?

She was American

She was opposed to Yeats's radical politics

She was an Irish revolutionary

She was best known as a painter
16 Which of the following is true of this poem?

It is a direct commentary on Irish independence

Its primary theme is the nature of consciousness

It is written in the second person

It is written from the point of view of an inanimate object
17 Which is a conflict in the poem?

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

The disagreement between a young woman and her parents
18 Who is the poem's speaker?

A young woman looking forward to old age

An old man looking back at his youth

An unidentified man, most likely a version of Yeats himself

A house remembering everything that has happened within its walls
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?

Aging and time

Nature and its destruction

Motherhood

Music and art
21 This poem is based on an earlier work by whom?

Seamus Heaney

Christina Rosetti

Petrarch

Pierre de Ronsard
22 How is the addressee characterized by the speaker?

As a kind person whose anger disguises her good intentions

As superficially charming, but full of hidden depths

As a likable but cruel schemer

As a person so repressed by the norms of her time that she has no real personality
23 What types of stanzas are in the poem?

Tercets

Octaves

Quatrains

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

Simile

Metonymy

End rhyme

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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