When You Are Old Quizzes

When You Are Old Quiz

1 Which book did this poem first appear in?

The Rose

A Book of Irish Verse

The Tower

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

Comfortable

Soft

Pleasing

Happy
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?

Georgiana Hyde-Lees

Maud Gonne

James Joyce

Teresa Deevy
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

Grace

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

Zealous

Regretful

Bitter

Melancholy
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 Victorian Dublin schoolyard

A magical realm

A house in twentieth-century Ireland

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

AABB

ABBA

ABAB
13 Which line features alliterative G sounds?

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you

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
14 Which emotion is personified in this poem?

Regret

Fury

Sadness

Love
15 Which of the following is true of Maud Gonne?

She was best known as a painter

She was opposed to Yeats's radical politics

She was an Irish revolutionary

She was American
16 Which of the following is true of this poem?

Its primary theme is the nature of consciousness

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

It is a direct commentary on Irish independence

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

The tension between youthful passion and the jadedness of age

The fight between Irish revolutionaries and the British government

The dislike between the speaker and the woman he is engaged to

The disagreement between a young woman and her parents
18 Who is the poem's speaker?

A house remembering everything that has happened within its walls

An unidentified man, most likely a version of Yeats himself

An old man looking back at his youth

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 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

Motherhood

Aging and time

Nature and its destruction
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 a kind person whose anger disguises her good intentions

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 likable but cruel schemer
23 What types of stanzas are in the poem?

Quatrains

Couplets

Tercets

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

Allusion

Metonymy

Simile

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

Romantic and softhearted

A gifted student

A traveler to a religious site

Sickly

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…