There are several other verses about the same creature, by different American poets; but none of them is quite so good as the composition of Holmes.

However, I may cite a few verses from one of the earlier American poets, Philip Freneau, who flourished in the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth.

He long anticipated the fancy of Holmes; but he spells the word Catydid.
In a branch of willow hid Sings the evening Catydid: From the lofty locust bough Feeding on a drop of dew, In her suit of green arrayed Hear her singing in the shade-- Catydid, Catydid, Catydid! While upon a leaf you tread, Or repose your little head On your sheet of shadows laid, All the day you nothing said; Half the night your cheery tongue Revelled out its little song,-- Nothing else but Catydid.
* * * * * Tell me, what did Caty do?
Did she mean to trouble you?
Why was Caty not forbid To trouble little Catydid?
Wrong, indeed, at you to fling, Hurting no one while you sing,-- Catydid! Catydid! Catydid! To Dr.Holmes the voice of the cicada seemed like the voice of an old obstinate woman, an old prude, accusing a young girl of some fault,--but to Freneau the cry of the little creature seemed rather to be like the cry of a little child complaining--a little girl, perhaps, complaining that somebody had been throwing stones at her, or had hurt her in some way.
And, of course, the unfinished character of the phrase allows equally well either supposition.
Before going back to more serious poetry, I want--while we are speaking of American poets--to make one reference to the ironical or satirical poetry which insects have inspired in some minds, taking for example the poem by Charlotte Perkins Stetson about a butterfly.

This author is rather a person of note, being a prominent figure in educational reforms and the author of a volume of poems of a remarkably strong kind in the didactic sense.

In other words, she is especially a moral poet; and unless moral poetry be really very well executed, it is scarcely worth while classing it as literature.