One of Dylan's greatest songs,and it means nothing at all, and yet everything, because it describes a dream that anyone with Dylan's background might have had -- of a jester with bells (which were stolen), of a deck of cards left defenseless when the leaders surrendered, of fiends nailing time bombs to the hands of the clocks.

Like a few other songs of that era, it will survive precisely because it is not limited to the politics of the era, and people will find meaning in it a century after it was written. Like Blake's "Tyger, Tyger", and in a way, like a lot of Alice in Wonderland.