One example of this challenge is his Holy Sonnet X, Death Be Not Proud, from which come the famous lines Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.

In the latter, human experiences are described in terms of an outsized metaphor (a kind of metaphorical hyperbole), like the stock comparison of eyes to the sun, which Shakespeare makes light of in his sonnet 130 My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun.