When You Are Old Quizzes

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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

Soft

Pleasing
3 What is the poem's meter?

Dactylic Pentameter

Iambic pentameter

Iambic Tetrameter

Free Verse
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

Baseless hatred

Familial obligation

Political solidarity
6 Which of the following words is an instance of onomatopoeia?

Crowd

Shadows

Grace

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

Regretful

Melancholy

Zealous

Bitter
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?

Parallelism

Hyperbole

Juxtaposition

Personification
10 Which best describes the poem's setting?

A Victorian Dublin schoolyard

A house in twentieth-century Ireland

A magical realm

An abandoned castle in Europe
11 How many stanzas are in this poem?

One

Four

Five

Three
12 What is the poem's rhyme scheme?

ABAB

ABBA

ABC

AABB
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

Sadness

Fury

Regret
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 American

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

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

Its primary theme is the nature of consciousness

It is a direct commentary on Irish independence

It is written in the second person
17 Which is a conflict in the poem?

The fight between Irish revolutionaries and the British government

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
18 Who is the poem's speaker?

An unidentified man, most likely a version of Yeats himself

A young woman looking forward to old age

A house remembering everything that has happened within its walls

An old man looking back at his youth
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 describes a person who cannot distinguish the past from the future

It is about time travel to Ireland's past

It mostly takes place in a hypothetical, imagined future
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?

Seamus Heaney

Petrarch

Christina Rosetti

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

As a likable but cruel schemer

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
23 What types of stanzas are in the poem?

Couplets

Octaves

Tercets

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

Metonymy

Simile

Allusion

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

A traveler to a religious site

A gifted student

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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