Absalom and Achitophel advice of the double agent Hushai over the good advice of Achitophel. Achitophel, realising that the rebellion is doomed to failure, goes home and hangs himself. Absalom is killed (against David's explicit commands) after getting caught by his hair in the thick branches of a great oak tree: "His head caught fast in the oak, and he was left hanging between heaven and earth, while the mule that was under him went on" (NRSV 2 Sam. 18:9). The death of his son, Absalom, causes David enormous personal grief. A second allegory in the poem, beginning on line 425, is the
A Witness Tree A Witness Tree A Witness Tree is a collection of poems by Robert Frost, most of which are short lyric, first published in 1942. The collection was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1943. This collection was published after several unfortunate tragedies had occurred in Frost's personal life, including his daughter Marjorie's death in 1934, his wife's death in 1938, and his son Carol's suicide in 1940. Despite these losses, Frost continued to work on his poetry and eventually fell in love with his secretary Kay Marrison, who became the primary inspiration of the love poems in this collection.