“What’s in a name?” the poet asks,
Which, on pondering, brings this gleaning:
It is the life behind the name
That gives the name its meaning.
From Margaret Royalty Edwards’ “A Name”
Perhaps it is in the water. Or in the air. Or maybe even in the ground. Whatever the reason, Waco has been blessed with a disproportionate number of poets. On the popular music side, Billy Joe Shaver, Carolyn Hester, Hank Thompson, James Hand and others were born (or lived) here. On the classical side, Waco also boasts at least four Texas Poet Laureates — Dollilee Davis Smith, Mildred Lindsey Raiborn, Kathryn Henry Harris and Margaret Royalty Edwards. Edwards served as poet laureate from 1957 to 1959 and was a tireless advocate for poetry her entire life.
A third generation Texan, Margaret was born on October 31, 1895, to George W. and Margaret J. Royalty of Gatesville. She graduated from Gatesville High School in 1912, where she wrote her first poem — one of the requirements for graduation from GHS in those days.
At Baylor later that year, Margaret threw herself into campus life. She soon was named “Co-Ed News Editor” for The Lariat, the student newspaper, and in November 1915, selected as the Associate Editor of Baylor Round-Up, the school’s yearbook. Prior to her graduation in 1916, she is mentioned dozens of times in The Lariat for her various activities, including a stint in the hospital for appendicitis in February of 1915. While studying English literature, she was particularly attached to Dr. A.J. Armstrong, the founder of the Armstrong-Browning Library at Baylor.
In 1916, she was elected to represent Gatesville as Duchess at the Queen’s Ball during the heyday of Waco’s Cotton Palace. According to another article in The Lariat from October 19: “Miss Royalty was quite well known to the Baylor students and it will be remembered that she was voted as one of the popular girls last year.”
After graduation, Margaret returned to Gatesville in September 1916 to teach high school. She was wooed away from her hometown by Herbert R. Edwards, who had served with the infantry during World War I in Europe. The couple married in 1918 and moved to Waco. In February 1926, the couple welcomed a son, George R., who later attended Baylor Law School.
Margaret taught at the Baylor Academy and then began a long career teaching at West Junior High School in Waco. After World War II, her first articles and poems began to appear in different magazines, journals and newspapers, and she eventually released three slim volumes of essays and short poems, “New Leaves,” “Quatrains” and “Reflections on the Twenty-third Psalm” in 1947.
In 1957, the Texas Legislature selected Edwards as the state’s 13th Poet Laureate, a post first created in 1932. Edwards’ lone volume of poetry, “The Lure of the Road and Other Poems,” was released by the Naylor Company in 1959.
Margaret also contributed a regular column to The Waco Tribune-Herald, titled “Think” which offered short observations on life, both local and national, and at least one column, published on September 24, 1961, seems eerily prescient:
Times like these really do “try men’s souls” so that it behooves all of us to be much in prayer for guidance for those on whom rests the responsibility of decisions. In the meantime, we should keep our “lamps trimmed” for any emergency, our spirits high, our tensions low and believe with Browning that right will triumph in the end.
Through the years, Margaret accrued numerous honors and was invited to join a host of prestigious organizations, including the United Poets Laureate International, National Federation of Press Women, Daughters of the Republic of Texas, Centro Studi e Scambi Internazionali, the Texas Folklore Society and others.
She said that one of her proudest honors was to have the Richfield High School honorary literary society named for her — The Edwards Literary Society — and she often spoke to the group, which recognized students with outstanding grades in English classes.
Herbert and Margaret, who decades earlier purchased a home at 2815 Sanger Avenue, also maintained a working farm near the Mound community outside Gatesville and returned there regularly.
Margaret’s last major publication was a series of short biographies titled “Poets Laureate of Texas” in 1956, which was updated and retitled “Poets Laureate of Texas, 1931-1966,” and published by Naylor in 1966. In it, she includes a self-effacing biography where she claims to have told the selection committee that she felt that her poetry was unworthy of such an honor: “Assured by the committee that it was ‘too late to change’ to a more qualified poet, Mrs. Edwards tried to make up for the deficiency by ‘promoting’ poetry, which she was endeavored to do ever since.”
True to her promise to the committee, Margaret was tireless in her support of poetry. She spoke and gave readings across Waco and throughout the state, accepting every invitation — no matter how small — to every club, organization, lunch group, society, classroom, Bible study or Sunday School class that asked. Sometimes she presented as many as four times in a day.
Margaret Royalty Edwards died at her home 2815 Sanger on March 16, 1969, at age 73. She was buried in Oakwood Cemetery.
Her poetry, short, sweet-spirited observations on life, were mostly written as short, rhymed couplets designed to uplift and encourage the reader, as seen in these excerpts:
And it’s gone! Then it remains to me
Only in my pictured memory
From “A Texas Sunset”
At the end of the rainbow your hands have wrought
You may find all the gold your heart has sought.
From “What the Hand Findeth to Do”
