When You Are Old Quizzes

When You Are Old Quiz

1 Which book did this poem first appear in?
A Book of Irish Verse

The Tower

The Rose

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

Comfortable

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?
Georgiana Hyde-Lees

Teresa Deevy

Maud Gonne

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

Political solidarity

Lost love

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

Murmur

Crowd

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

Melancholy

Bitter

Regretful
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?
Personification

Hyperbole

Parallelism

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

A house in twentieth-century Ireland

An abandoned castle in Europe

A Victorian Dublin schoolyard
11 How many stanzas are in this poem?
Five

Three

Four

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

ABAB

ABC

ABBA
13 Which line features alliterative G sounds?
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

When you are old and grey and full of sleep

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?
Regret

Love

Fury

Sadness
15 Which of the following is true of Maud Gonne?
She was an Irish revolutionary

She was best known as a painter

She was opposed to Yeats's radical politics

She was American
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 tension between youthful passion and the jadedness of age

The dislike between the speaker and the woman he is engaged to
18 Who is the poem's speaker?
A young woman looking forward to old age

An unidentified man, most likely a version of Yeats himself

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 is about time travel to Ireland's past

It mostly takes place in a hypothetical, imagined future

It describes a person who cannot distinguish the past from the future
20 Which of the following themes does this poem engage with most?
Music and art

Aging and time

Motherhood

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

Seamus Heaney

Pierre de Ronsard

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?
Quatrains

Tercets

Octaves

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

Allusion

Metonymy

Simile
25 Which of the following is one meaning of the word "pilgrim"?
Sickly

A traveler to a religious site

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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