What did Tennyson mean by 'Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untravel'd world whose margin fades forever and forever when I move'?

Answer 1

To me, it means that each experience I have opens up more possibilities, while at the same time framing those possibilities, hence, the arch through which the possibilities are viewed. The possibilities are "as yet unexperienced."

It is part of the poem in which Ulysses seems to be yearning for his time as a traveler, seeking new experiences, and saying that he wants more experiences even though he is old and tired. Later on he says,

"And this gray spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought."

This suggests to me an expression of his desire, and hence perhaps of the desire which drives human beings.

Another suggestion:

In Experience and Education, John Dewey refers to these lines from Tennyson's poem where he discusses "the principle of continuity of experience". He writes that "every experience both takes up something from those which have gone before and modifies in some way the quality of those which come after." (1963: 35).

Our experiences form a continuity, an identity perhaps. They carry forward elements of our past, e.g. emotional and intellectual attitudes, and ways of responding to our situations which all in turn influence how we experience what is to come.

Answer 2

Tennyson is expressing the idea that despite our experiences and knowledge, there will always be an unknown world awaiting to be discovered. This unknown world keeps fading as we move forward, suggesting that there are always new horizons and mysteries to explore in life.