When You Are Old Quizzes

When You Are Old Quiz

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

The Rose

Cathleen Ní Houlihan

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

Happy

Soft

Pleasing
3 What is the poem's meter?
Free Verse

Iambic Tetrameter

Iambic pentameter

Dactylic Pentameter
4 Which real-life figure was the poem likely addressed to?
Teresa Deevy

James Joyce

Georgiana Hyde-Lees

Maud Gonne
5 Which best describes the relationship between the speaker and the addressee?
Familial obligation

Baseless hatred

Lost love

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

Crowd

Shadows

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

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 argues that he actually wants to help the addressee rather than just admire her
9 The poem's contrast between the home and the wilderness is an instance of which of the following?
Hyperbole

Parallelism

Personification

Juxtaposition
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?
Five

One

Four

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

ABBA

AABB

ABAB
13 Which line features alliterative G sounds?
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

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

Sadness

Love

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

She was American

She was an Irish revolutionary

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

It is a direct commentary on Irish independence

Its primary theme is the nature of consciousness

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 fight between Irish revolutionaries and the British government

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

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 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

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

Nature and its destruction

Music and art

Motherhood
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 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?
Octaves

Tercets

Couplets

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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