Neil Young - After the Gold Rush (Just in Case the World Ends Today)

Neil Young
After the Gold Rush

Because one of these days it will be the end of the world. And yes, there are many songs more directly about the end of the world, but this one has always struck me as just the right balance of apocalyptic and hippie dream.

And then, the circus version (because there must be a circus version):

End of the World

Archibald MacLeish


Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb
Quite unexpectedly the top blew off:

And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark, the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing—nothing at all.