The boy's uncle comes in drunk, having completely forgotten he had promised to take the boy to the bazaar called Araby. The bazaar means very little to the uncle, though it is very important to the boy. The uncle, at the aunt's urging, gives the boy a florin so that he can go by himself, though it is very late. Then, as the boy is leaving, he hears his uncle about to recite the opening lines of "The Arab's Farewell to his Steed" to his aunt. It's very possible that the word Araby connects in his uncle's mind to the word "Arab" in the poem. The opening lines are:

My beautiful! my beautiful! that standest meekly by.
With thy proudly-arched and glossy neck, and dark and fiery eye!
Fret not to roam the desert now with all they winged speed:
I may not mount on thee again – thou’rt sold, my Arab steed!

These words of sentimental verse foreshadow the end of the boy's dream of wooing and winning the unnamed girl, who is melded in his mind with the exotically named bazaar, Araby.

The boy has been thinking of the girl as his beloved, his "beautiful," just as the speaker of the poem thinks of the steed as his beautiful beloved. Nevertheless, by the end of the story, the boy realizes, while standing in the almost empty temple of commerce which is the bazaar, that he will no longer get by on the false dream of Araby, just as in the poem the Arab will no longer ride on his steed.