Lather as You Go
death
Beneath this slab John Brown is stowed. He watched the ads And not the road.
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.
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