Final answer:
The urn as a symbol represents timelessness and the enduring quality of artistic beauty and truth, teasing mortals with hopes of everlasting happiness, as illustrated in poetry by John Keats, John Donne, and Thomas Gray.
Step-by-step explanation:
The statement that the urn, as a work of art, teases mortal humans by making them hope that their happiness will last as long as the happiness of the figures on the urn is true. This concept is rooted in the interpretations of the urn as an artistic symbol that has been explored through poetry across various periods. Poets like John Keats, in his "Ode on a Grecian Urn", and earlier, John Donne and Thomas Gray, have used the urn as a metaphor for art's capacity to capture and convey eternal beauty and truth. The urn, therefore, is not merely a container of ashes or a decorative artifact; it becomes a storied urn or well-wrought urn in literature that teases the viewer with the illusion of timelessness and perpetuates the joy depicted in its frieze.