The poem starts with a small, quiet image: a table that did its job perfectly, now abandoned and alone. Nothing about it is fancy. It is "a plain thing of perfect service," useful and unremarkable, and that seems to be the point. Once it stops being needed, it simply slides into neglect.
The last two lines turn to the speaker. They admit they don't really understand "how things go," meaning how time wears everything down. Then comes the surprising confession: "I fear war, not time." The speaker seems to see the table's fate as natural and gentle, something that happens slowly and without violence. War would be a sudden, human destruction. The title, "Sic Transit," echoes a Latin phrase about worldly things passing away, so the poem sits with that idea.
The mood is hushed and wistful, with a thread of unease. Judging by the lines, the speaker accepts time's slow decay more easily than the thought of deliberate ruin.