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?

Free Verse

Iambic pentameter

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?

Political solidarity

Lost love

Baseless hatred

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

Crowd

Murmur

Shadows

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

Bitter

Zealous

Melancholy

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

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

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?

Juxtaposition

Parallelism

Hyperbole

Personification
10 Which best describes the poem's setting?

A Victorian Dublin schoolyard

A house in twentieth-century Ireland

An abandoned castle in Europe

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

One

Three

Four

Five
12 What is the poem's rhyme scheme?

ABC

ABBA

ABAB

AABB
13 Which line features alliterative G sounds?

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you

When you are old and grey and full of sleep

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 American

She was best known as a painter

She was an Irish revolutionary

She was opposed to Yeats's radical politics
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 tension between youthful passion and the jadedness of age

The disagreement between a young woman and her parents

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

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

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 describes a person who cannot distinguish the past from the future

It is about time travel to Ireland's past

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?

Motherhood

Aging and time

Music and art

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

Christina Rosetti

Pierre de Ronsard

Petrarch

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

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

As superficially charming, but full of hidden depths

As a likable but cruel schemer

As a kind person whose anger disguises her good intentions
23 What types of stanzas are in the poem?

Couplets

Tercets

Octaves

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

End rhyme

Metonymy

Allusion

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

Sickly

A traveler to a religious site

A gifted student

Romantic and softhearted

When You Are Old Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for When You Are Old is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Ask Your Own Question

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.

Read the Study Guide for When You Are Old…