Gower's next work was the _Vox clamantis_ in Latin elegiac verse, in which the author takes occasion from the peasants' insurrection of 1381 to deal again with the faults of the various classes of society. In the earlier portion the insurrection itself is described in a rather vivid manner, though under the form of an allegory: the remainder contains much the same material as we have already seen in that part of the French poem where the classes of society are described. Gower's Latin verse is very fair, as judged by the medieval standard, but in this book he has borrowed very freely from Ovid, Alexander Neckam, Peter de Riga and others.
Gower's chief claim, however, to reputation as a poet rests upon his English work, the _Confessio amantis_, in which he displays in his native language a real gift as a story-teller. He is himself the lover of his poem, in spite of his advancing years, and he makes his confession to Genius, the priest of Venus, under the usual headings supplied by the seven deadly sins. These with their several branches are successively described, and the nature of them illustrated by tales, which are directed to the illustration both of the general nature of the sin, and of the particular form which it may take in a lover. Finally he receives at once his absolution, and his dismissal from the service of Venus, for which his age renders him unfit. The idea is ingenious, and there is often much quaintness of fancy in the application of moral ideas to the relations of the lover and his mistress. The tales are drawn from very various sources and are often extremely well told. The metre is the short couplet, and it is extremely smooth and regular. The great fault of the _Confessio amantis_ is the extent of its digressions, especially in the fifth and seventh books.
Gower also wrote in 1397 a short series of French ballades on the virtue of the married state (_Traitié pour essampler les amantz mariés_), and after the accession of Henry IV. he produced the _Cronica tripartita_, a partisan account in Latin leonine hexameters of the events of the last twelve years of the reign of Richard II. About the same time he addressed an English poem in seven-line stanzas to Henry IV. (_In Praise of Peace_), and dedicated to the king a series of French ballades (_Cinkante Balades_), which deal with the conventional topics of love, but are often graceful and even poetical in expression. Several occasional Latin pieces also belong to the later years of his life.