This delightful little couplet is not nearly as well known as it deserves to be, and, to make matters worse, is consistently misattributed to Ogden Nash. I’d always thought that the latter was merely due to the fact that it “sounded Nashian”, but apparently the story is deeper than that - as Eric Shackle writes:

According to Nash’s grand-daughter, Frances R. Smith of Baltimore, Maryland, (and she should know) what he actually wrote was:

      "The Catsup Bottle"
      First a little
      Then a lottle

(Catsup is another American word for ketchup. Brits and Aussies call it tomato sauce.)

Then, in 1949, another US humorist, Richard Willard Armour (1906-1989), seems to have gleefully seized on Nash’s rhyme, and produced the couplet that many people enjoy reciting to this day.

– http://www.bdb.co.za/shackle/articles/ketchup.htm

As with Augustus de Morgan’s rewriting of Swift’s verse about the flea (see the comment upon Poem #797), Armour’s verse is a distinct improvement on the original, and I feel he deserves the credit for it.

— Martin

Links

The poem is quoted in a wonderful article about why ketchup behaves thus:
http://exploration.nasa.gov/articles/07jun_elastic_fluids-liftoff.html

Biography

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Armour_(poet)

Armour has also written several hilarious (and, I believe, out-of-print) books - keep an eye out for them.