What does John Donne lament in The First Anniversarie: An Anatomie of the World?

In The First Anniversarie: An Anatomie of the World, John Donne uses the death of Elizabeth Drury—whom he characterizes as an idealized "Idea of a woman" and a lost pattern of virtue—to lament the spiritual death of humanity.1

He frames this lamentation as a philosophical meditation on the decay of the world, tracing a decline that begins with the loss of Eden and persists into the contemporary era. Donne argues that in this state of decay, humanity has lost the essential wisdom that connects individuals to God.1