Thomas Aquinas Commentary Lamentations 1:4

"The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn assembly; All her gates are desolate, her priests do sigh: Her virgins are afflicted, and she herself is in bitterness." — Lamentations 1:4 (ASV)

Here he deplores the misery of those who remain.

1. With regard to the pilgrims who used to visit her. The ways of Zion mourn: they arouse mourning; to the solemn feast, which is threefold: Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. The ways are made desolate, no one passes by the road, the covenant is made void (Isaiah 33:8).
2. With regard to the people who ornamented the city, namely, her princes: all her gates are broken down, because judgments were given at the gates. And her gates shall lament and mourn, and she shall sit forsaken on the ground (Isaiah 3:26). Her priests: her priests sigh. Between the porch and the altar the priests shall weep (Joel 2:17). Her virgins: her virgins are in affliction, and defiled. Disfigured with calamity and misery. And they ate grass (Job 30:3–4). And the princes, and the ancients mourned, and the virgins and the young men were made feeble, and the beauty of the women was changed .
3. With regard to the people who filled it: and she, the people, or the city, is oppressed with bitterness. For the Almighty has quite filled me with bitterness (Ruth 1:20).

At the top of this verse is placed the letter, daleth, that is, “troubled,” because he weeps over the destruction of the temple, which was paneled with cedar and covered with gold (1 Chronicles 6:16–20).

This is the eighth topic of complaint.“The eighth is one by which something is said to have been done which ought not to have been done; or not to have been done which ought to have been. In this manner: I was not present, I did not see him, I did not hear his last words, I did not receive his last breath. Moreover, he died amid his enemies, he lay shamefully unburied in an enemy’s country, being torn to pieces by wild beasts, and was deprived in death of even that honor which is the due of all men” (Cicero, De Inventione 1.55).

Allegorically, the ways: leading to heaven; of Zion: the prophets and preachers; to the solemn feast: of the heavenly homeland; gates: the prelates of the Church, who bring people in; priests: who attend to sacred things; virgins: who in the Church have the first rank. All these are shaken for sins, and as they are shaken, the people who are below them are filled with bitterness. Hence Moses broke the tablets (Exodus 32:19).

Morally, the ways are the virtues of the soul; to the solemn feast: of contemplation; gates: the senses; priests: souls in the sanctity of divine religion; virgins: souls in purity of conscience; when these are shaken, the soul itself is oppressed by the bitterness of vices.