[1]With his eager, resolute eyes aglow, [2]Alert for a glimpse of the nearing foe, [3]With his sturdy shoulder backward thrown, [4]Facing odds that he dare not own, [5]Ready to start at the country's call, [6]To win if God will-if He will, to fall, [7]Whatever may cost the impending strife, [8]Home or fortune or limb or life-- [9]Ready to give what the hour demands, [10]The hero of Concoral's story stands. 1. How does the poem's structure contribute to the theme of the poem? 2. Using context clues from the poem, what is the meaning of strive in line 7? 3. How do lines 1-2 contribute to the meaning of the poem?

[1] nothing that comes from the desert expresses its extremes better than the unhappy growth of the tree yuccas. tormented, thin forests of it stalk drearily in the high mesas, particularly in that triangular slip that fans out eastward from the meeting of the sierras and coastwise hills. the yucca bristles with bayonet-pointed leaves, dull green, growing shaggy with age like an old [5] man's tangled gray beard, tipped with panicles of foul, greenish blooms. after its death, which is slow, the ghostly hollow network of its woody skeleton, with hardly power to rot, makes even the moonlight fearful. but it isn't always this way. before the yucca has come to flower, while yet its bloom is a luxurious, creamy, cone-shaped bud of the size of a small cabbage, full of sugary sap. the indians twist it deftly out of its fence of daggers and roast the prize for their [10] own delectation why does the author use the words "bayonet-pointed" (line 4) and "fence of daggers" (line 9) to describe the leaves of the yucca tree? . to create an image of the sharp edges of the plant to emphasize how beautiful the plant's leaves are to explain when and where the plant grows to show how afraid the author is of the plant