When You Are Old Quizzes

When You Are Old Quiz

1 Which book did this poem first appear in?

The Rose

A Book of Irish Verse

The Tower

Cathleen Ní Houlihan
2 What does "glad" most closely mean in this work's context?

Comfortable

Soft

Pleasing

Happy
3 What is the poem's meter?

Iambic pentameter

Free Verse

Dactylic Pentameter

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

James Joyce

Teresa Deevy

Georgiana Hyde-Lees

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

Political solidarity

Familial obligation

Lost love

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

Crowd

Murmur

Shadows

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

Regretful

Zealous

Melancholy

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

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

He insists that his love is a mystical, almost magic force
9 The poem's contrast between the home and the wilderness is an instance of which of the following?

Parallelism

Personification

Hyperbole

Juxtaposition
10 Which best describes the poem's setting?

A Victorian Dublin schoolyard

A magical realm

An abandoned castle in Europe

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

Four

Five

One

Three
12 What is the poem's rhyme scheme?

ABAB

AABB

ABBA

ABC
13 Which line features alliterative G sounds?

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

When you are old and grey and full of sleep

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you

How many loved your moments of glad grace
14 Which emotion is personified in this poem?

Love

Fury

Regret

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

She was an Irish revolutionary

She was American

She was best known as a painter

She was opposed to Yeats's radical politics
16 Which of the following is true of this poem?

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

It is written in the second person

Its primary theme is the nature of consciousness

It is a direct commentary on Irish independence
17 Which is a conflict in the poem?

The disagreement between a young woman and her parents

The tension between youthful passion and the jadedness of age

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

The fight between Irish revolutionaries and the British government
18 Who is the poem's speaker?

A house remembering everything that has happened within its walls

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
19 Which of the following is true of this poem and the way it engages with time?

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

It mostly takes place in a hypothetical, imagined future
20 Which of the following themes does this poem engage with most?

Aging and time

Nature and its destruction

Music and art

Motherhood
21 This poem is based on an earlier work by whom?

Petrarch

Pierre de Ronsard

Christina Rosetti

Seamus Heaney
22 How is the addressee characterized by the speaker?

As superficially charming, but full of hidden depths

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

As a kind person whose anger disguises her good intentions

As a likable but cruel schemer
23 What types of stanzas are in the poem?

Quatrains

Octaves

Tercets

Couplets
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"?

A traveler to a religious site

Sickly

Romantic and softhearted

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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