Jack -

"How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a man?"

Metaphorically can mean: "How much life experience must each of us go through before attaining something approaching maturity?"

"How many seas must a white dove sail, before she sleeps in the sand?"

Can mean: What further trials must the human race go through before we manage to achieve peace in this wartorn world?

"How many times must the cannonballs fly, before they're forever banned?"

When will the nations of the Earth come to their senses and outlaw war?

"The answer my friend is blowing in the wind..."

We have no way of knowing the answers to these questions.

The above are quite simple lyrics, and the messages are obvious. They say a great deal in a few words. He has far more mysterious metaphors than that, but I don't want to spend the rest of my life typing out stuff about them.

Here's a cool one, though: "To live outside the law you must be honest"

To escape the smothering bounds of conventional thoughts and rules you must have the courage to be yourself, regardless of the consequences. That requires honesty.

The interpretations I've given for these various lines aren't the only ones. Clearly. But they are among the possibilities that the lines suggest.

Here's another fun line: "It balances on your head just like a mattress balances on a bottle of wine."

In other words, it's another good tool for seduction. An aphrodisiac, you might say...but the line is sung in a humorously sarcastic fashion.

These might not be the kind of metaphors you're looking for, of course.

Try looking up the lyrics of Jokerman. There's some very mysterious stuff happening in that one. Some of it's got to be about Jesus, some of it may be about Satan. It's not an easy one to be sure of one way or the other.