Quemadmodum desiderat cervus ad fontes aquarum: ita desiderat anima mea ad te Deus.

6
As a choir singer in a past life, I learned to translate Psalm 42:1-2 from the Herbert Howells anthem using the text from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

"Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks : so longeth my soul after thee, O God. My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the living God : when shall I come to appear before the presence of God?"

The Mechon Mamre Hebrew-English Bible reads:

"As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: 'When shall I come and appear before God?'"

The Revised Standard Version reads:

"As a hart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?"

The New English Bible reads:

"As a hind longs for the running streams, so do I long for thee, O God. With my whole being I thirst for God, the living God. When shall I come to God and appear in his presence?"

The book Alcoholics Anonymous reads:

"[We] Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out."

My current favorite translation is from The Message by Eugene H. Peterson:

"A white-tailed deer drinks from the creek; I want to drink God, deep draughts of God. I'm thirsty for God-alive. I wonder, 'Will I ever make it—arrive and drink in God's presence?'"

Emily Dickinson has a somewhat different take on the matter:

Of Course - I prayed -
And did God Care?
He cared as much as on the Air
A Bird - had stamped her foot -
And cried "Give Me" -
My Reason - Life -
I had not had - but for Yourself -
'Twere better Charity
To leave me in the Atom's Tomb -
Merry, and Nought, and gay, and numb -
Than this smart Misery

And John Donne, in his sermon, "Now in a Glass, then Face to Face," complicates the issue even further:

The best knowledge that we have of God here, even by faith, is rather that he knows us, than that we know him. And in this text it is in his own person that the Apostle puts the instance, "Now I know but in part." And therefore, as St. Augustine saith, Sunt quasi cunabula charitatis Dei, quibus diligimus proximum, the love which we bear to our neighbor is but as the infancy, but the cradle of that love which we bear to God. So that the sight of God which we have in speculo, in the glass, that is in nature, is but the cunabula fidei, but the infancy, but the cradle of that knowledge which we have in faith, and yet that knowledge which we have in faith is but cunabula visionis, the infancy and cradle of that knowledge which we shall have when we come to see God "face to face."