Lather as You Go

Lather as You Go - meaning Summary

A Wry Epitaph on Distraction

Ogden Nash's short epitaph compresses a comic moral into four lines. It presents John Brown's burial as the punchline: he watched the ads and not the road. The poem uses wry understatement to link modern distraction—especially consumer advertising—with fatal inattention. Its tone is blackly humorous rather than elegiac, turning a tombstone into social commentary about distraction, fleeting priorities, and misdirected attention.