How is the gold become dim! [how] is the most pure gold changed! The stones of the sanctuary are poured out at the head of every street.
"How is the gold become dim ... changed!"  (Lamentations 4:1a).  This is metaphor.  The following verse identifies the gold as "the precious sons of Zion."  As elaborated a few lines later, the well-dressed, amply supplied nobles of Jerusalem had become skin and bones, dying of starvation, sitting upon dunghills in search of food.  We have here Jeremiah's eyewitness account of all this.