O SINGER of Persephone!
In the dim meadows desolate
Dost thou remember Sicily?
Still through the ivy flits the bee
Where Amaryllis lies in state
O Singer of Persephone!
Simætha calls on Hecate
And hears the wild dogs at the gate;
Dost thou remember Sicily?
Still by the light and laughing sea
Poor Polypheme bemoans his fate:
O Singer of Persephone!
And still in boyish rivalry
Young Daphnis challenges his mate:
In  the first stanzas , the speaker asks how one can remember joy in despair, as well as be optimistic in despair. In this stanza, the speaker brings up another point: do we feel pity for the suffering of the evil? Does imposing evil onto evil make one evil? 
 
 Polyphemus (or Polypheme) was the leader of the man-eating giants from  The Odyssey , and lived in the Land of the Cyclopes, which is  also in Sicily . Odysseus defeated Polyphemus by stabbing him in the eye whilst he was drunk. 
 This is also a reference to Theocritus’s Idyll xi, wherein Polypheme laments over his unrequited love for the nymph Galatea.
Theocritus