When You Are Old Quizzes

When You Are Old Quiz

1 Which book did this poem first appear in?

A Book of Irish Verse

Cathleen Ní Houlihan

The Tower

The Rose
2 What does "glad" most closely mean in this work's context?

Pleasing

Comfortable

Soft

Happy
3 What is the poem's meter?

Iambic pentameter

Free Verse

Dactylic Pentameter

Iambic Tetrameter
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?

Lost love

Political solidarity

Baseless hatred

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

Grace

Crowd

Murmur

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

Melancholy

Regretful

Bitter

Zealous
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 insists that his love is a mystical, almost magic force

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

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?

Hyperbole

Personification

Parallelism

Juxtaposition
10 Which best describes the poem's setting?

An abandoned castle in Europe

A Victorian Dublin schoolyard

A house in twentieth-century Ireland

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

Four

One

Three

Five
12 What is the poem's rhyme scheme?

ABAB

ABC

AABB

ABBA
13 Which line features alliterative G sounds?

How many loved your moments of glad grace

When you are old and grey and full of sleep

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you

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

Regret

Sadness

Love

Fury
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

Its primary theme is the nature of consciousness

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 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
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 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

It describes a person who cannot distinguish the past from the future
20 Which of the following themes does this poem engage with most?

Motherhood

Music and art

Aging and time

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

Christina Rosetti

Seamus Heaney

Petrarch

Pierre de Ronsard
22 How is the addressee characterized by the speaker?

As a kind person whose anger disguises her good intentions

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
23 What types of stanzas are in the poem?

Quatrains

Tercets

Couplets

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

Metonymy

End rhyme

Simile

Allusion
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

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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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