The Empire Builders (Stead): data towards insight into ancestral foibles

R. J. C. Stead. The Empire Builders (1908) Stead’s verses remind me of Kipling in their jingoism and Service in their rhymes and rhythm. They range from sentimentally heroic tales of pioneering homesteaders to abstract paeans on Man, Mother, Empire etc. Stead liked adjectives and Latinate diction, which I suppose he believed made his commonplace prejudices sound not only poetic but thoughtful and weighty. They must have seemed so to his readers in 1908, when he published this book, and which reached its fourth edition (this copy) by 1910.
     An online search reveals many editions in many different formats and price levels. Stead’s verses appealed to a large audience. They don’t appeal to me, except as awful examples of empire-worship in the Edwardian era. And of the wrong-headed belief that anything that rhymes must be poetry.
     A curiosity, data towards a better insight into the foibles of our ancestors, and thereby also a warning that much of what we consider to be proper sentiments will certainly appear wrongheaded to our descendants. *

Footnote: Stead wrote jingoistic novels as well. He worked for the CPR's immigration department, producing "reams of rose-hued prose extolling the clean, healthy vigour of life in the open spaces—spaces opened courtesy of the CPR and available at good prices. On his own time, he writes in the same vein...". The posters were also "rose-hued".