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On Metaphor
A metaphor is simply any substitution of two unlike terms. As the broadest of the tropes, it is often used to mean any trope. A simile is a metaphor with the substitution made explicit by using a comparative such as "as" or "like".

Basic Definitions
Metaphor in Handlist of Rhetorical Devices
Metaphor in Silva Rhetoricae.

 Corbett and Connors 396: "An implied comparison between two things of unlike nature that yet have something in common."

Notes on Metaphor
Metaphor is one of Vico's and Burke's "four master tropes." It is sometimes discussed in terms of an entire world view which is based on metaphor, myth and narrative rather than propositional rationality.

Illustrations

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. (King, "I Have a Dream")
References
Burke, Kenneth. "Appendix D: Four Master Tropes." A Grammar of Motives. Berkeley: U of California P, 1969. 503-517.
Corbett, Edward P. J. and Robert J. Connors. Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. 4th ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1999.
Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1957.
Pepper, Stephen C. World Hypotheses: A Study in Evidence. Berkeley: U of California P, 1948.
White, Hayden V. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1973.
Metaphor in Rhetorical Criticism: A Bibliography