When You Are Old Quizzes

When You Are Old Quiz

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

Cathleen Ní Houlihan

A Book of Irish Verse

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

Pleasing

Comfortable

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

Free Verse

Dactylic Pentameter

Iambic pentameter
4 Which real-life figure was the poem likely addressed to?
Georgiana Hyde-Lees

Teresa Deevy

James Joyce

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

Political solidarity

Lost love

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

Grace

Murmur

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

Bitter

Melancholy

Regretful
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?
Parallelism

Juxtaposition

Hyperbole

Personification
10 Which best describes the poem's setting?
A house in twentieth-century Ireland

A magical realm

A Victorian Dublin schoolyard

An abandoned castle in Europe
11 How many stanzas are in this poem?
Five

Three

One

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

ABBA

ABAB

AABB
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

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

Love

Sadness
15 Which of the following is true of Maud Gonne?
She was American

She was an Irish revolutionary

She was best known as a painter

She was opposed to Yeats's radical politics
16 Which of the following is true of this poem?
Its primary theme is the nature of consciousness

It is written in the second person

It is a direct commentary on Irish independence

It is written from the point of view of an inanimate object
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 tension between youthful passion and the jadedness of age

The fight between Irish revolutionaries and the British government
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 mostly takes place in a hypothetical, imagined future

It takes place over a series of flashbacks

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

It is about time travel to Ireland's past
20 Which of the following themes does this poem engage with most?
Motherhood

Aging and time

Nature and its destruction

Music and art
21 This poem is based on an earlier work by whom?
Seamus Heaney

Petrarch

Christina Rosetti

Pierre de Ronsard
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 superficially charming, but full of hidden depths

As a kind person whose anger disguises her good intentions
23 What types of stanzas are in the poem?
Couplets

Octaves

Quatrains

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

Simile

Metonymy

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

Romantic and softhearted

A gifted student

A traveler to a religious site

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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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