On p157 of 'I Crossed The Minch' MacNeice writes that he wrote 'Leaving Barra' (Poems, 1937) sitting on a deck-chair in the stern of a ship. The closing verses and particularly the closing line of this poem, "While you are alive beyond question, Like the dazzle on the sea, my darling." fits with his writing in 'The Strings Are False', p171, about spending time in 1937 with someone "of all the people I have known she could be the most radiant." He also writes that she "could be as gloomy as to black-out London," but that "I do not regret the hours and hours of argument and melancholy, the unanswerable lamentations of someone who wanted to be happy in a way that was just not practical." He is believed to have been referring to Nancy Spender, who he had been having an affair with at this time. Nancy painted a portrait of MacNeice at this time.(https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/frederick-louis-macneice-157930/search/actor:sharp-nancy-19092001/page/1/view_as/grid)
