When You Are Old Quizzes

When You Are Old Quiz

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

The Tower

A Book of Irish Verse

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

Pleasing

Comfortable

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

Dactylic Pentameter

Iambic pentameter

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

Maud Gonne

Teresa Deevy

James Joyce
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?
Shadows

Crowd

Murmur

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

Bitter

Zealous

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?
Hyperbole

Parallelism

Juxtaposition

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

A Victorian Dublin schoolyard

An abandoned castle in Europe

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

One

Four

Five
12 What is the poem's rhyme scheme?
AABB

ABBA

ABAB

ABC
13 Which line features alliterative G sounds?
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you

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
14 Which emotion is personified in this poem?
Sadness

Regret

Fury

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?
It is written in the second person

Its primary theme is the nature of consciousness

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 fight between Irish revolutionaries and the British government

The tension between youthful passion and the jadedness of age
18 Who is the poem's speaker?
A house remembering everything that has happened within its walls

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
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 describes a person who cannot distinguish the past from the future

It is about time travel to Ireland's past

It takes place over a series of flashbacks
20 Which of the following themes does this poem engage with most?
Aging and time

Nature and its destruction

Motherhood

Music and art
21 This poem is based on an earlier work by whom?
Christina Rosetti

Pierre de Ronsard

Petrarch

Seamus Heaney
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 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?
Octaves

Tercets

Quatrains

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

Metonymy

Allusion

Simile
25 Which of the following is one meaning of the word "pilgrim"?
Romantic and softhearted

A gifted student

Sickly

A traveler to a religious site

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…