preciousness.  That would extend the metaphor beyond its initial use of describing the color of my son's eyes.

A metaphor is much more than a figure of speech. We tend to think it metaphors and to dream in metaphors. A great poet like Shakespeare can write in metaphors. Our brains can make metaphors out of practically anything. It is part of the way we think. We equate one thing with another. We use metaphors in our daily speech because we see connections between different things.He's a Napoleon. She's a princess. That car is a lemon. Marriage is slavery. Old age is hell. Sometimes we repeat other people's metaphors, but occasionally we come up spontaneously with metaphors of our own, and sometimes other people take them up and they spread across the country. Life is a rat race. Travel is a fools' paradise. Horse racing is a sucker's game. A useful trade is a mine of gold. A penny saved is a penny earned. Metaphors aren't just for decoration but express important truths in few words.

Shakespeare's sonnets are full of metaphors and are probably the best examples of metaphors. Read especially sonnet LXXIII, beginning:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruin'd choirs, where lete the sweet birds sang.

A metaphor is a form of direct comparison, where one thing is said to be another, directly, by using the verb "to be".

For example:

• The boy is a cypress press.
• James is a stallion dashing across the savannah, all grace and speed.
• The toddler is a butterfly flitting from his mother to his father's arms.

There is also such a thing as a metaphysical conceit--also a metaphor, but a comparsion between two seemingly unrelated things.

John Donne is a master at this, and an example of this is in his poem, "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" where he compares his love for his wife to a compass and also where he compares his love for his wife to gold.

The man is leaving his wife for a business trip and he tells her their love above all the crying and physical mourning.  He says you are the fixed foot (of the compass) and I am the part with the pencil...the farther away I travel, we never really part.  You just lean toward me until I come home again and we are again together.

He also compares their love to gold.  He says we never leave each other--absence makes our hearts grow fonder and we are connected not just physically, but spiritually and emotionally.  So, like gold, when you beat it, it never breaks.  It only expands to an airy thinness like gold foil.  We are like that.

Metaphors are a comparison between two things without the words "like" or "as".  Usually the comparison is fairly obvious or take little thought to make the connection.

Metaphysical conceits are metaphors taken to the next level. 

An easy way to remember metaphor is:

A metaphor is a comparison between two things without the use of like or as (it's almost the same as a simile, except we omit the like or as)

Some examples of metaphors are:

Time is a river

(Time is being compared to a river, perhaps because rivers flow on endlessly just like time passes endlessly)

Don't change a horse in the middle of a race

(Here the comparison is not as easy to see. This is a comparison between a horse race and perhaps someone faced with a decision to press on with a project or to change a course of action. For example, if a person was a senior in college it wouldn't be wise to change majors because it will take a long time to finish just like if a person in a horse race decided to change horses in the middle- he surely will lose so it would be unwise.)

A metaphor is a way of explaining something in terms of something else, without using the words "like" or "as." It is an implied comparison. I think the best way to help you understand this is with some examples. 

In explaining that I have a difficult task to do, I might say, "It's going to be long haul." My task, which might be grading a large pile of papers, has nothing to do with hauling anything anywhere, but it gives the listener an image of someone having to do a lot of work by hauling something very heavy over a long distance. That is a metaphor. 

I might write that someone who had an unpleasant surprise was shell-shocked—in other words, shocked by the form of bomb called a shell, which one could be attacked with in a war. Everyone reading this understands I am making a comparison with a person who is attacked, but that the person I am speaking of has not been attacked, and is instead just unpleasantly surprised.  

In each instance, the reader or listener must be able to understand what attributes of the metaphor are meant as the comparison. Otherwise, the metaphor cannot be understood properly. If I say someone is a rock, I probably mean the person is strong and someone I can depend upon.  A misinterpretation of that might be that this is someone who is very cold, unemotional, or who has rough edges.  These kinds of misunderstandings can happen for the listener or reader who does not have a good familiarity with the language being used. Young children also frequently misunderstand metaphors because they take them literally. When I was a child, I remember my father saying someone he knew was fired, which probably did start out as a metaphor. I was terribly upset because I had the image in my mind of a man on fire. This does show us, though, how strong an image a metaphor can provide!