Ravenous and raging
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Questi parea che contra me venisse con la test’ alta e con rabbiosa fame, sì che parea che l’ aere ne tremesse.
This beast seemed to be coming against me with its head held high and with such ravenous fury that the very air seemed to shudder at it.
The lion seems to come at him, head high and starving, so that the very air seems to tremble.
The lion is almost pure appetite — <i>rabbiosa fame</i>, a rabid hunger — and Dante makes the whole atmosphere flinch, as if the animal's rage disturbed the air like heat. Everything else stayed still for the leopard; the lion sets the world shaking.
Each beast is scaled up from the last: darting, then charging, then, in the she-wolf, something worse than either. The canto is a slow discovery that no amount of daylight or hope will let a person climb this hill alone.
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Inferno 1.46 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/dante-inferno/1.46/