The poem reads like a short piece of advice, which fits its title, "Apothegmatic," a word meaning pithy and proverb-like. The speaker tells us to love a bard, a poet or singer, only for the pleasant things he brings: good company and wine. The tone is light, almost offhand, as if poetry were just part of a good evening.
Then the last two lines turn the idea. A king, we're told, is a ladder to the crown. The comparison is a little puzzling, and it can be read in more than one way. One reading is that people use a king as a step toward something else, so affection becomes a tool. Another is that the bard's pleasures are only a way up to something greater, the crown, which might stand for poetry's real power. The poem doesn't settle this.
What the speaker feels is hard to pin down. The mood is wry, compact and slightly teasing, leaving you to puzzle over what loving someone for the wrong reasons really means.