When You Are Old Quizzes

When You Are Old Quiz

1 Which book did this poem first appear in?
The Rose

The Tower

Cathleen Ní Houlihan

A Book of Irish Verse
2 What does "glad" most closely mean in this work's context?
Happy

Soft

Pleasing

Comfortable
3 What is the poem's meter?
Iambic pentameter

Free Verse

Iambic Tetrameter

Dactylic Pentameter
4 Which real-life figure was the poem likely addressed to?
Georgiana Hyde-Lees

James Joyce

Maud Gonne

Teresa Deevy
5 Which best describes the relationship between the speaker and the addressee?
Familial obligation

Political solidarity

Baseless hatred

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

Murmur

Shadows

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

Regretful

Melancholy

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

He explains that he has loved the addressee for longer than anyone else
9 The poem's contrast between the home and the wilderness is an instance of which of the following?
Personification

Parallelism

Hyperbole

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?
One

Four

Five

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

ABBA

ABC

AABB
13 Which line features alliterative G sounds?
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you

How many loved your moments of glad grace

When you are old and grey and full of sleep

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
14 Which emotion is personified in this poem?
Fury

Sadness

Regret

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

She was American

She was opposed to Yeats's radical politics

She was best known as a painter
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 fight between Irish revolutionaries and the British government

The tension between youthful passion and the jadedness of age

The disagreement between a young woman and her parents

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

An old man looking back at his youth

A house remembering everything that has happened within its walls
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 mostly takes place in a hypothetical, imagined future

It takes place over a series of flashbacks
20 Which of the following themes does this poem engage with most?
Music and art

Nature and its destruction

Aging and time

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

Seamus Heaney

Christina Rosetti

Petrarch
22 How is the addressee characterized by the speaker?
As superficially charming, but full of hidden depths

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
23 What types of stanzas are in the poem?
Tercets

Quatrains

Couplets

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

Allusion

End rhyme

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

A gifted student

A traveler to a religious site

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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