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

Happy

Pleasing

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

Free Verse

Iambic pentameter

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?
Lost love

Familial obligation

Political solidarity

Baseless hatred
6 Which of the following words is an instance of onomatopoeia?
Shadows

Crowd

Murmur

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

Bitter

Regretful

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

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?
Personification

Hyperbole

Parallelism

Juxtaposition
10 Which best describes the poem's setting?
A Victorian Dublin schoolyard

An abandoned castle in Europe

A magical realm

A house in twentieth-century Ireland
11 How many stanzas are in this poem?
One

Four

Five

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

AABB

ABBA

ABC
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

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you
14 Which emotion is personified in this poem?
Regret

Fury

Sadness

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

She was best known as a painter

She was American

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 tension between youthful passion and the jadedness of age

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

The fight between Irish revolutionaries and the British government

The disagreement between a young woman and her parents
18 Who is the poem's speaker?
An unidentified man, most likely a version of Yeats himself

A house remembering everything that has happened within its walls

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 is about time travel to Ireland's past

It takes place over a series of flashbacks

It describes a person who cannot distinguish the past from the future

It mostly takes place in a hypothetical, imagined future
20 Which of the following themes does this poem engage with most?
Music and art

Motherhood

Nature and its destruction

Aging and time
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 a person so repressed by the norms of her time that she has no real personality

As a likable but cruel schemer

As a kind person whose anger disguises her good intentions

As superficially charming, but full of hidden depths
23 What types of stanzas are in the poem?
Octaves

Couplets

Tercets

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

Simile

Metonymy

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

A traveler to a religious site

A gifted student

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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