"the wind howls like a hammer" seems like a perfect line to me, specially in the context of the verse it's in. Obviously, a hammer does not howl in the literal sense of making any howling sound, but that's not the point of the line at all. The point of the line is that the wind is fierce and violent and strong and without mercy. And that's why I say that it's an absolutely perfect line, very fine poetry. I wish I'd written it.

"while Suzanne holds the mirror" is also a good line, and here's why. The mirror has long been used in literature, poetry, and legend as a symbol of the feminine archetype. Leonard Cohen was evoking it in that sense, I believe, that Suzanne was holding in herself the archetype of the feminine very powerfully. She was, to him, the Feminine embodied. Again, it's a very good line.

Noble or dramatic poetry will always be seen as grandiose by someone who is not in sympathy with it for some reason...while it will be seen as noble and quite appropriate by someone who is in sympathy with it. So, it's totally up to you whether you interpret a given poem is "noble"....or "grandiose"...and once you've decided it's one or the other, no one else will convince you otherwise, I expect. So I certainly won't try to...

Poetry is not written to provide answers, in my opinion. It is written to inspire and to raise questions in the mind of the reader so that the reader will look deeper into things and go searching for deeper meaning. Math books and science books and text books are written to provide answers...and they are most definitely useful for that, but they're not poetry.

As Dylan said in another song, don't look to him to provide answers where answers can't be found. He was not trying to provide any answers for anyone, he was just expressing himself in a way that fulfilled him somehow at the time. If other people thought his job was to provide answers for them, that was their mistake.

As to my remark about Dorothy's metaphor (actually, it was a simile, to be more precise)....I was basically joking when I said that. I think it's quite funny for someone to say that Dylan sounds like a sick cow...it gave me a chuckle, and I love how he sounds...so I figured I'd say something funny back to her in return. Sick cows, actually, don't usually make much of any sound at all other than maybe an occasional low sigh or moan. Mostly they just lie there and suffer silently. ;-) Dylan makes a tremendously greater amount of noise than any sick cow ever did or ever will...and that's why I joked that her metaphor "lacks merit", but I was speaking tongue in cheek (with a grin on my face) when I said it.