The poem is built around a strange link between eating and wrongdoing. In the first stanza, people at a table talk about rich, fatty venison, and about a mother taken by the table next to them. That last detail is odd and a little unsettling, since it's unclear whether "mother" means an animal or something else. Then comes the blunt line "We sin and so fall sick," which treats appetite as a kind of moral failing with a physical price.
The second stanza turns more personal. The speaker sends his wife a pewter rose and a venison pasty, a gift that mixes tenderness with food. The "cold joy" is a striking phrase: pleasure that feels chilly, maybe hollow or short-lived. The poem ends by repeating the idea of falling sick, so the sickness seems to come from the indulgence itself.
The mood is uneasy and darkly playful. The language is compact and almost like a chant, and the poem seems to suggest that even affection and pleasure carry a touch of guilt.