When You Are Old Quizzes

When You Are Old Quiz

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

The Rose

A Book of Irish Verse

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

Soft

Pleasing

Happy
3 What is the poem's meter?
Dactylic Pentameter

Free Verse

Iambic pentameter

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

Georgiana Hyde-Lees

Teresa Deevy

James Joyce
5 Which best describes the relationship between the speaker and the addressee?
Baseless hatred

Familial obligation

Political solidarity

Lost love
6 Which of the following words is an instance of onomatopoeia?
Murmur

Grace

Crowd

Shadows
7 Which does NOT describe the poem's tone?
Melancholy

Zealous

Bitter

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

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

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?
Personification

Hyperbole

Juxtaposition

Parallelism
10 Which best describes the poem's setting?
An abandoned castle in Europe

A house in twentieth-century Ireland

A Victorian Dublin schoolyard

A magical realm
11 How many stanzas are in this poem?
Four

Five

One

Three
12 What is the poem's rhyme scheme?
AABB

ABC

ABBA

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

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

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?
Sadness

Regret

Fury

Love
15 Which of the following is true of Maud Gonne?
She was opposed to Yeats's radical politics

She was an Irish revolutionary

She was best known as a painter

She was American
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 from the point of view of an inanimate object

It is written in the second person
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 tension between youthful passion and the jadedness of age

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

An unidentified man, most likely a version of Yeats himself

An old man looking back at his youth

A young woman looking forward to old age
19 Which of the following is true of this poem and the way it engages with time?
It takes place over a series of flashbacks

It is about time travel to Ireland's past

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

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

Aging and time

Music and art

Nature and its destruction
21 This poem is based on an earlier work by whom?
Christina Rosetti

Petrarch

Pierre de Ronsard

Seamus Heaney
22 How is the addressee characterized by the speaker?
As a likable but cruel schemer

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

Quatrains

Octaves

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

Allusion

Metonymy

End rhyme
25 Which of the following is one meaning of the word "pilgrim"?
A gifted student

A traveler to a religious site

Sickly

Romantic and softhearted

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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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