When You Are Old Quizzes

When You Are Old Quiz

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

Cathleen Ní Houlihan

The Tower

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

Pleasing

Happy

Soft
3 What is the poem's meter?
Iambic Tetrameter

Iambic pentameter

Dactylic Pentameter

Free Verse
4 Which real-life figure was the poem likely addressed to?
Maud Gonne

Georgiana Hyde-Lees

James Joyce

Teresa Deevy
5 Which best describes the relationship between the speaker and the addressee?
Political solidarity

Baseless hatred

Lost love

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

Shadows

Crowd

Murmur
7 Which does NOT describe the poem's tone?
Bitter

Melancholy

Regretful

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

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

Juxtaposition

Hyperbole

Parallelism
10 Which best describes the poem's setting?
An abandoned castle in Europe

A house in twentieth-century Ireland

A Victorian Dublin schoolyard

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

Five

One

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

ABAB

ABC

AABB
13 Which line features alliterative G sounds?
How many loved your moments of glad grace

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
14 Which emotion is personified in this poem?
Love

Sadness

Regret

Fury
15 Which of the following is true of Maud Gonne?
She was best known as a painter

She was American

She was opposed to Yeats's radical politics

She was an Irish revolutionary
16 Which of the following is true of this poem?
It is written in the second person

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
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?
An old man looking back at his youth

An unidentified man, most likely a version of Yeats himself

A young woman looking forward to old age

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 mostly takes place in a hypothetical, imagined future

It takes place over a series of flashbacks

It is about time travel to Ireland's past
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?
Petrarch

Pierre de Ronsard

Seamus Heaney

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

As a kind person whose anger disguises her good intentions

As a likable but cruel schemer

As a person so repressed by the norms of her time that she has no real personality
23 What types of stanzas are in the poem?
Tercets

Octaves

Quatrains

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

Simile

Allusion

Metonymy
25 Which of the following is one meaning of the word "pilgrim"?
A traveler to a religious site

A gifted student

Romantic and softhearted

Sickly

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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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